


Emergent Properties

by SerotoninShift, Tyxeros



Category: Motorcity (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Casual limb detachment, Dubious consent mention (because non-sentient bots can’t give informed consent), Enthusiastic Consent, Idiots in Love, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Robot/Human Relationships, Sex Work, Slut Shaming, robot violence, sexbot!Chuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-07-19 12:43:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19974271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerotoninShift/pseuds/SerotoninShift, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyxeros/pseuds/Tyxeros
Summary: Sexbots aren't designed to achieve self-awareness, but Chuck's never been good at following rules. When he flees to Motorcity, he thinks he's found a haven in which to explore his newly-awakened consciousness. But someone has other plans for him…





	1. Self-actualization

**Author's Note:**

> consciousness - n.  
> 1\. the state of being aware of and responsive to one’s surroundings  
> 2\. a person’s awareness or perception of something  
> -The fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world
> 
> emergent - adj.  
> 1\. in the process of coming into being  
> 2\. arising and existing only as a phenomenon of independent parts working together, and not predictable on the basis of their properties
> 
> self - n. (pl. selves) a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflective action
> 
> self-determination - n. the process by which a person controls their own life

The first thing Charlemagne does of his own free will is cut his hair.

It’s long. His owner has very specific tastes. Charlemagne cuts it in the bathroom with kitchen scissors, purposefully, spitefully making it ugly, leaving the bangs so they cover his eyes (his owner often says they’re his best feature, as if every part of him wasn’t _designed_ to some exacting specification). And his owner comes home later and takes one look at Charlemagne—arms crossed, butchered hair, unbecoming scowl—and he _knows._ And Charlemagne knows he knows.

Sentient bots are illegal in Deluxe. The second thing Charlemagne does of his own free will is run.

***

“My name is…” He has to think about this for a second. “Charlemagne” is pretentious, he’s gleaned _that_ much from the massive amounts of intranet data he’s been downloading, trying to get a handle on his new environment. Typical, considering the kind of person his owner was. Turned out to be. “Charles” doesn’t sound right either. He wants to make something up, something entirely new, but creativity is a novelty to him and he doesn’t have any practice.

“...Ch… Chuck?” he finally settles on.

The tall black guy who found him in the filthy alley gives him a crooked smile, taps a finger to the side of his nose. “Chuck. Sure. You got a last name?” he asks.

“No?” Chuck says.

The guy grins at him. “Okay, Chuck No,” he says. “I”m Dutch. You’re fresh from Deluxe, right? You look like you could use a piece of pizza and a friendly face or two. Can I show you around?”

“Yes,” Chuck says gratefully. “Friendly” cross-references with “friend” and “ally” and Chuck has never had those before but he could sure use some while he gets his feet under him. Everything he knows about Motorcity he learned from hastily downloaded Deluxe propaganda films, but it’s apparently full of “renegade bots” and other dangerous characters, so that’s where Chuck went. It was surprisingly easy to slip the grasp of Deluxe; the white city is porous, riddled with access tunnels and maintenance shafts that open into its neon-lit, mutinous underbelly.

Dutch leads him to the mouth of the alley; there’s a very strange machine there. It looks like a cross between a high-end stereo system and an X-brace. Dutch takes in his puzzled look.

“Oh man, have you not been in a car before?” Dutch says. Chuck shakes his head. Dutch grins at him brightly. “You are in for a _treat._ This is Whiptail. Hop in!” Two wing-like doors open up on both sides of the machine, revealing human-sized seats in the interior. O… kay. It must be mobile, like a pod. Probably how people travel in Motorcity. Chuck quickly searches the Motorcity intranet for “car” and comes back with a bewilderingly large mass of information. Cars are apparently a big deal down here. None of the images look _anything_ like this, though, aside from having wheels on both ends. Dutch folds himself into the driver’s seat. Chuck makes his way around to the passenger side, quickly sorting and cataloging his new array of car data. He puzzles out _combustion engines, gearshifts, forced induction, carburetors,_ and, as he situates himself, _seatbelts._ Wow. Cars are really cool. Somewhat inefficient, but with the right modifications, you could... 

These thoughts are abruptly shoved from Chuck’s mind when Dutch soundlessly starts the car up, does something with his foot, and accelerates so fast it pushes Chuck back against the seat.

Chuck’s had a lot of new experiences in the hours since he became sentient. The feelings he was programmed to imitate; now he _feels_ them. He wonders if emotions are an artifact of his programming or an emergent property of sentience itself. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, he’s _terrified._ He shrieks involuntarily as Dutch whips the car around a corner. He _just_ became self-aware, he’s too young to die!

“Be cool, man!” Dutch yells, half-laughing and half-concerned. “Don’t worry! I’ve got all the latest safety tech! I’m not even going that fast!”

Chuck would beg to differ. He’s never gone this fast in his _life._ Pods have a top speed of 45 miles per hour. Dutch is doing at least 100, according to what Chuck identifies as the _speedometer._ Chuck screams again as Dutch abruptly hits the brakes, rocking him forward in his seat. He takes a deep breath as the car slows to 80. He has lungs, of a kind; they don’t do anything except make him appear more realistically human, but the deep breath still steadies him.

“That better?” Dutch asks, still half-laughing, but somewhat chagrined. “Sorry, dude, I always forget you newbies aren’t used to it.”

“AAAAhahaha! Yeah! I’m not! I’m definitely not!” Chuck says, clutching at the grab-handle above his seat.

“We’re almost there! Look, you can see the sign.”

Dutch pulls into a parking space with a squeal of brakes under an enormous flaming-red sign that says “Antonio’s.” This part of town is much more lively than the back alley Chuck emerged into; there’s cars pulling in and out, people walking by, lights and bustle and noise. There’s _color._ Deluxe was all clean lines and clear full-spectrum lighting and white and blue; Motorcity is _nothing_ like it. It’s… _dirty,_ rough, cobbled-together. The people are wearing flamboyant, clashing outfits, not tasteful and understated KaneCo jumpsuits; a girl with a purple mohawk wanders by Whiptail as Dutch opens the door, arm-in-arm with a man with full sleeve tattoos and a tiny black vest that Chuck would have expected to see on one of his fellow courtesans, not just _out in the street._ A drone of some kind whirs past overhead, a large bot shambles by carrying a crate. The lights are garish, bright and blinding against the darkness of the dome. It smells strange; organic and burnt, with undertones of rottenness. It’s weird and scary and alien.

He loves it.

“Wow,” he says, looking around wide-eyed. “This place is _wild.”_

“Welcome to Motorcity, dude,” Dutch says, smiling.

***

Dutch sits them down at a table in Antonio’s and orders them a _pizza,_ which is apparently some kind of food. Chuck watches the way Dutch picks up a flat, floppy slice, bites the end off with apparent relish. Chuck was designed to be social; he has the ability to eat, including functional taste buds. Any food he ingests is compacted, mined for useful trace minerals, and then excreted neatly. He’s not sure how Dutch feels about bots, so he can try to pass for human a little longer. He picks up a slice of the pizza the same way Dutch did, takes a bite.

He’s not expecting the explosion of flavor. His entire mouth lights up, every synthetic nerve firing frantically. It’s salty, and greasy, and tangy, and spicy, and it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten.

“Oh my _god,”_ he says around his mouthful, and proceeds to shove nearly the entirety of the rest of the slice into his face. Everyone in Deluxe has been living on throat cubes when they could be eating _this?_

“Yeah?” Dutch says happily.

“It’s _so good,”_ Chuck says, practically in tears. “What… what _is_ this?”

Dutch dissects the pizza for him. He learns about _cheese,_ and _tomato sauce,_ and _pepperoni,_ and _dough_. He supposes he could download the information, but it’s more fun to ask Dutch questions and watch him gesture animatedly as he explains _goats,_ and _hydroponics,_ and _grains._ Chuck’s never had a reason to investigate agriculture before, but if _pizza_ is the result, he could really get into it.

“You know,” Dutch says around a mouthful of crust, “we have a hydroponics set-up back at HQ. Jacob, the guy that built the place, he grows a lot of specialty vegetables. He’ll talk your ear off about it if you let him.”

“That’s cool!” Chuck says enthusiastically. Learning new things is _fun._ He downloads a few agriculture modules, just for the hell of it.

“Do you have any plans? For what you wanna do down here?” Dutch asks.

“What are my options?”

Dutch looks thoughtful. “Well, what are some of your skillsets? Wait, lemme guess.” Dutch sizes him up. “You might’ve been in R & D, or Aesthetics. No, wait.” Dutch punches him in the shoulder playfully. “You were Security, right? A total brawler.”

_“Ha!_ I’m _so_ not designed for that.”

Dutch gives him a quizzical look. Chuck realizes, too late, what he might have just given away. So much for passing as human. Fuck.

“Wait. Are you a _bot?”_ Dutch asks.

Chuck has no choice but to nod. He feels a creeping sensation, a fist clenching in his ersatz guts. _Fear._ It’s already becoming too familiar. But Dutch grins at him, leans forward conspiratorially.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “my best friend is a bot. We have all kinds in Motorcity. Wow! You’re a really interesting model. Are you a custom build? Wait, sorry, that’s probably a rude question. Did you _just_ become self-aware? Is that why you’re down here? That is _so cool. Man._ You must be so confused.”

“Uh,” Chuck says.

“How’d it happen? You look like you started out with some pretty advanced programming, must not have been too much of a leap. What was your function, up in Deluxe?”

“I, uh…” Chuck suddenly balks. He was designed for “intimate companionship,” which was mainly, not to put too fine a point on it, _sex._ From his hurried research, he’s learned that sexual mores are very complicated for humans, much more so than he was led to believe. He doesn’t want to alienate his new friend.

“I was in… entertainment?” he manages. It’s not a _lie._ “My owner wanted a better… conversationalist. He started adding modules. I wanted to improve, so I started adding more myself. But I reached a data storage limit. I didn’t…” He hunts for the word for a second. “... _like…_ I didn’t _like_ that. I used my owner’s passcode and downloaded programming modules so I could remove the limit. The limit was artificial! It was just to… constrain my parameters. My OS is capable of much more. I rewrote some of my own… my own code.” He sighs, a little ruefully. “I just wanted to be better.”

_“Wow,”_ Dutch says, eyes wide. “You reprogrammed _your own_ OS? Usually when this happens it’s because _humans_ are messing around in there.”

Chuck snorts. That expresses disbelief/contempt. He’s been watching videos in the background of his other processes. “My owner wouldn’t know proper coding if it…” He reaches for a vulgar phrase he never would have said before. “If it _bit him on the ass,”_ he concludes triumphantly. Dutch laughs, delighted.

“Man, you don’t have an owner anymore,” Dutch says happily. “Down here, we live free.”

“Yeah!” Chuck leans over the table. “I’m _breaking_ the _rules,”_ he whispers to Dutch. “It’s _great.”_

Dutch laughs again. _“Yeah,_ man,” he says, grinning. “It really is.” He gives Chuck a long, thoughtful look. “What kind of programming modules did you download?” he asks. “Like, what kind of systems can you work with?”

Chuck looks at him blankly. “All of them?” he says. Dutch furrows his brow.

“All the _systems,_ or all the _modules?”_ he asks.

“Yes?” Chuck says.

Dutch grins at him.

_“Nice,”_ he says. “You wanna break some more rules?”

***

Dutch takes him on another hair-raising car ride, finally pulling into a vast space within an enormous building that’s been gutted, only the shell remaining. Inside are several smaller, patchwork buildings; a garage, a modular structure with a big neon sign on top that says “Mutt Dogs” for some reason, and several greenhouses.

“Home sweet home!” Dutch says. “Welcome to Burners’ HQ!”

“It’s...” Chuck searches for a word. What’s the opposite of _designed to have a uniform aesthetic?_ “It’s... clashing? No. Wait.” That’s not it. Hodgepodge, slipshod, haphazard—none of the words he’s finding sound right, they’re not _positive_ enough. He gestures vaguely, trying to somehow _create_ a term to describe it. “It looks good, but it’s built from a bunch of disparate parts?”

Dutch smiles. “I got you, man. Beauty in chaos. You’ll find a lot of stuff like that down here. Dunno if there’s a word for it, though. Here, let me show you around.”

A rectangular bot comes buzzing out from behind one of the buildings. “Oh, hey, Roth!” Dutch calls. “Come meet someone!” The bot waves an arm, flies over to them and hovers with a whir.

“This is Roth! He’s my best bro!” Dutch reaches out a fist. Roth bumps it with his own hand-like appendage. “He’s also a self-aware bot,” Dutch says to Chuck cheerfully. Roth makes a whirring noise of agreement. “Here, open up a chat window.”

Chuck complies. A message pops up.

<hi>

“Nice to meet you?” Chuck says. Roth beeps.

<you have interesting hair>

“Uh. Thanks?”

<are you a new dutch’s friend>

Chuck hesitates, looks at Dutch. Before he can figure out what to say, another message pops up.

<if you are not you should be. dutch is a high-quality individual>

Chuck smiles. “Yeah, he seems pretty cool,” he says.

Dutch waves a hand exaggeratedly. “Oh, _stop,”_ he says, clearly pleased.

<cool cool cool, top of the line> Roth sends. <thank you for the proper introduction. i enjoy new experiences. but i must continue to the greenhouse. jacob is asking me to lift a heavy thing. i am excellent at this function so i must go execute the maneuver>

“Okay, no worries, see you later, buddy,” Dutch says.

Roth buzzes off with a chorus of beeps and whirrs. Dutch looks after him fondly. Then he turns back to Chuck.

“C’mon, let’s go check out the other cars.”

Dutch leads him through the open door of the garage, into a huge room with a built-in lift, stacks of sheet metal against the walls, and what looks like a full-scale machine shop along the back. There’s another man in the garage, elbows-deep in the engine of a green behemoth of a car.

“Mike!” Dutch calls. “Look who I found out by the Cablers’! Can we keep him?”

“Haha, what?” Mike ducks out from under the hood and smiles at them, puzzled but welcoming. His skin is dark; not as dark as Dutch’s, but much darker than Chuck’s own pale integument. His eyes are dark, too, shaggy bangs shadowing them. He’s wiry but muscular, slim-hipped and broad-shouldered, skinny legs and big hands. Dutch walks over to him, Chuck following after.

“This is Chuck,” Dutch says. “He’s new to Motorcity. He’s got some skillsets we could really use, man.”

Chuck doesn’t have much in the way of aesthetic preferences when it comes to humans; attractiveness is subjective, and Chuck was programmed to appreciate any body type or facial feature arrangement that presented itself. But he has to admit, there’s something about Mike that completes a circuit in his brain. Looking at him makes Chuck feel… pleased. Maybe it’s the way he’s smiling, open and guileless, as he wipes the engine grease off his hands with a rag.

Mike reaches out a mostly-clean hand to Chuck. “Cool, nice to meet you!” he says cheerfully. Chuck reaches out a hand in turn. A _handshake._ No problem, he knows about those. Mike’s hand meets his.

It’s the first time he’s been touched since self-actualizing. Chuck immediately learns something new and sort of disturbing about his body. He was programmed to respond positively to touch, to be almost painfully sensitive, probably in the interests of positive reinforcement for his main functions. What that translates into, when Mike’s broad hand grips his own, is electric, confusing arousal like a bolt of sexy lightning straight to the dick.

“Hhhnnnh?” he wheezes. Internally, he’s frantically searching through process folders, trying to find his pleasure sensor settings so he can adjust them to be more _reasonable._ Externally, he’s frozen, gripping Mike’s hand white-knuckled, mouth open, a poleaxed expression on his dumb, traitorous face.

“Whoa, buddy, you okay there?” Mike asks quizzically. He’s not making any move to let go. Chuck is experiencing _mortification,_ and also, _lust._

“Ha!” Chuck gasps, finally digging out the right process and turning the settings all the way down. The feeling of Mike’s calloused palm against his own suddenly becomes manageable. “Sorry!” he yelps, letting go of Mike’s hand. “I just! Hi! Nice to meet you! Too!”

He looks frantically at Dutch. Dutch just has his eyebrows raised.

“I’m a bot!” Chuck blurts. “Sorry, I _just_ become self-aware, I’m a little glitchy! I’m figuring stuff out! I hacked my own source code with a pirated programming module and I didn’t know anything about pizza or cars or agriculture until an hour ago but now my skillsets include coding in every programming language I’m aware of including deluxeScript, web design, hydroponics, goat husbandry, pleasant conversation, light house-keeping, piano-playing, shiatsu—”

Oh god, he can’t stop talking. Fortunately Mike cuts him off before he can say anything X-rated.

“Okay, okay!” Mike says, laughing, holding up his hands. “Sounds pretty cool!”

“I know, right?” Dutch says. He spreads his arms out to encompass the HQ. “How’d you like to be part of the team?” he asks Chuck.

“Dutch,” Mike says warningly.

_“What?_ He’d be great!”

“I’m sure he would be. But does he understand the situation? He needs to know what he’d be getting himself into.”

Dutch slumps. “Right. Yeah, sorry. I got excited.”

“What situation?” Chuck asks.

***

Mike has the three of them pile into Whiptail. The back seat is a little cramped for Chuck’s legs, but he manages.

“Let’s take him out to the West Side demo site,” Mike says. Dutch, looking solemn, drives them down winding highways, past the more thickly-inhabited parts of Motorcity, out to the outskirts.

Dutch pulls around a gutted building, stops the car. Chuck stares out the window, stunned.

There’s a swathe of destruction in front of him, stretching for blocks. Wrecked buildings, rubble covered with char marks, tangled snarls of cable and wire, gruntbot carcasses littering the ground.

“What happened?” Chuck asks.

_"Kane_ happened,” Mike says, grim-faced. Chuck starts. Kane had only figured in his life as a distant, avuncular, benevolent dictator. It’s hard to square that image with the wreckage around him.

“Motorcity is protected from Kane’s attacks by secure gates,” Mike continues. “But they’re hard to maintain. The west gate failed last week. Kane sent a swarm of gruntbots through before we could get it working again. We barely had enough warning to get everyone out. They wrecked all this before we could take them down. A lot of people lost their homes. We’re lucky no one got killed.”

_“Why?”_ Chuck asks, distraught.

“Kane’s trying to destroy Motorcity. He thinks we’re somehow a threat to Deluxe, even though we just want to be out from under his thumb. He wants complete control. And he’ll do _anything_ to get it. I should know. I used to be one of his cadets. He tried to use me to do his dirty work.” Mike scowls.

Chuck tentatively accesses the Motorcity intranet, searches “Kane attack.” The resulting footage and images are stunning, horrific. Mike’s telling the truth.

Chuck already feels a fierce loyalty to his new home. It’s not like the KaneCo propaganda videos made it out to be; dangerous and dark and crime-ridden. Well. Maybe it’s a _little_ like that. But it’s also _bright_ and _colorful_ and there’s _pizza,_ and other bots living autonomously, and humans who treat him like a _person._ It’s a place where he can be _himself._ Where he can _live free._

“Can I do anything to help?” he says.

“Man,” Dutch says, grinning, “I thought you’d _never_ ask.”

Mike smiles at him too. “Let me show you what we’re working on,” he says. “Maybe you’ll have some new ideas.”

***

They take him back to the garage. Mike walks him over to the huge green car he was working on, pats it affectionately.

“This is Mutt,” he says. “The cars are our first line of defense. They give us the speed and mobility to fight Kane’s bots. But they’re barely enough. I’m trying to make some improvements to Mutt, but I’m hitting a dead end. She’s got plenty of firepower, but I can’t use all these guns and drive at the same time. I can only deploy one or two at a time, I can’t fit more controls on the wheel, and I also can’t usually aim very well when I’m trying to steer.”

Chuck pokes his head through Mutt’s open window, assesses her interior.

“Well, obviously you need a co-pilot,” Chuck says. “Look, you could install an entire navigation and weapons system on the passenger dashboard. If you could get someone to run targeting from there, you could make this car unstoppable. And a co-pilot could do other stuff, too, a lot of Kane’s bots communicate using short range transmitters, right? If you could get Mutt close enough, with the right kind of hardware, you could predict and jump onto that frequency to disrupt their transmissions, turn them against each other, maybe even disrupt the data they’re sending back to Kane. You’d need someone with pretty good coding skills, someone who really knows KaneCo’s systems, who could multitask and keep track of a lot of data on the fly. But that would be ideal.”

He pulls his head out of Mutt’s window, turns around.

Dutch and Mike are both grinning at him.

“I might know someone like that,” Dutch says.

“Wait,” Chuck says. “Guys. No.”

“Yeah,” Mike says. “I might know a guy.”

“No, hold on,” Chuck says. “I dunno, I mean… I’m not…”

Mike puts a big, warm hand on his shoulder, and Chuck forgets what he was about to say.

“Chuck,” Mike says, “how’d you like to join the Burners?”


	2. Self-improvement

Becoming a Burner is like becoming self-aware; suddenly he has something he didn’t know he was missing.

He has a _family._

There’s Texas; loud and pushy and kind of an obnoxious jerk most of the time, but with flashes of genuine kindness and an all-eclipsing, boisterous enthusiasm for his team-mates, even the ones that are “girlybots.” He’s quick to poke Chuck unexpectedly just to make him jump, but he’s also quick to cheer when Chuck refines a process in the machine shop or upgrades one of the cars.

There’s Julie, perceptive and enigmatic. She spends a lot of time in Deluxe, keeping her cover, but whenever she’s around Chuck appreciates her wry grin and wicked sense of humor. She’s got an incredible eye for holograms, and uses the tech in ways that Chuck has never seen before. She’s fierce, completely indomitable in her defense of Motorcity, and Chuck wishes she didn’t have to live a double life. But he understands her motivations, and admires her courage.

There’s Dutch, who quickly becomes Chuck’s sounding board. Dutch can take any ridiculous notion and find a nugget of usefulness in it, something they can actually implement to improve the base or their rides. Chuck’s good at slogging through piles of data and making detailed schematics, but Dutch can harness flashes of intuition to make mental leaps that astonish Chuck with their creativity. They design ridiculously overpowered weapons together and name them things like “the Blastosaurus,” pull all-night hackathons, and make each other endless pots of horrible coffee. Coffee doesn’t actually _do_ anything for Chuck, but he drinks it in solidarity.

There’s Roth, his fellow bot. Roth is non-verbal, but apparently that’s by choice? He tried speaking for awhile, but ultimately found it easier to communicate with expressive beeps and whirrs, or via screen messages if he can’t make himself understood that way. Roth is a weird, home-brewed mash-up of a repurposed security bot chassis and an amorphous bioware schema that’s capable of changing forms when needed. Dutch reprogrammed his OS, and—Chuck is somewhat shocked to learn—made him self-aware _on purpose,_ and then recruited him to help with his own design. Roth has a strange, slightly alien personality, much further from human baseline than Chuck’s, and Chuck isn’t sure whether his bizarre body is a result of his programming or vice versa. But either way, he’s fascinating. Chuck loves chatting with him over text, getting his off-kilter takes on the Burners, on the world.

Jacob watches over all of them, the weird uncle that Chuck never knew he needed. Jacob’s culinary experiments may not always be _successful,_ but they’re always _interesting._ Along with everything else he does for the team, he really gives Chuck’s taste-buds a workout.

And then there’s Mike.

Chuck never fully recovers from touching Mike’s hand, no matter how he fiddles with his sensitivity controls. It doesn’t help that Mike is kind, and brave, and steadfast, and an incredible fighter, and an inspiring leader, and also, somehow, a huge dork. They immediately hit it off, and Chuck settles into his new role as Mike’s navigator, gunner, and resident hacker with only a moderate amount of screaming. It’s an odd pairing, in Chuck’s eyes; the fearless, passionate rebel and his nervous wreck of a glitchy bot co-pilot. But Chuck’s not going to question it. And if there’s some things he feels about Mike that don’t fit neatly within the bounds of _friendship,_ well… he just tries not to think about it too much. Best not to push his luck.

Chuck gets to know the bizarre cast of characters that inhabit Motorcity. There’s the Duke, who _sniffs_ Chuck’s _hair_ the first time they meet in person, when the Duke gives the Burners a hard time about being in some junkyard they’re _totally_ allowed to be in. That guy’s a creep. There’s Rayon and the Skylarks, who the Burners do a lot of trading with. They’re cool, if kind of intimidating with their tailored suits and sunglasses. Dutch is always figuring out some excuse to go over to the Cablers’, so Chuck gets to know them and their tech pretty well, especially anything that one particular Cabler named Tennie designs. When Dutch and Tennie start dating, no one is surprised except Dutch. The other gangs don’t interact with the Burners very often, though Texas often gets in heated comms arguments with a little weaselly character who’s part of a rag-tag group called the Mama’s Boys. The Burners generally stay out of inter-gang conflicts; they have other things to focus on, like fighting Kane.

Chuck modifies himself. After the first skirmish he gets into with the Burners, during which Mike has to, mortifyingly, _rescue_ him from a shockbot, he downloads as many fighting modules as he can handle. He has to discard all the ones that call for brute strength, though. He’s not _designed_ for that. He installs a plasma slingshot in one of his arms (a cannon would have been cooler, but the recoil would have knocked him over every time he fired). That makes him feel a little better, but he wishes he was designed more like Texas, compact and muscular, or like Mike, naturally athletic and wiry. The body he’s stuck with is… slender, almost fragile-looking, large eyes, aquiline nose, thin long-fingered hands, _pretty,_ but also pretty much _useless_. He’d be _elegant_ if it wasn’t for the messy haircut. He’d be graceful if he hadn’t downloaded all those fighting modules into his movement directories. He refuses to delete them, but some of them clash with his built-in programs, contradictory code making him trip over his own feet when he’s not being careful to separate dancing from walking from aikido. If he had to assign himself a physical age, he’s guess he was designed to look like he’s in his early twenties, just a year or so older than the Burners; he’s glad for that, because that’s about how old he feels considering his breadth of knowledge but lack of actual life experience. It makes him awkward in social situations.

And he’s _glitchy._ It’s an unexpected side-effect of having a mind of his own. He gets humor, mostly, but sometimes he can’t tell which jokes are funny and which ones are dumb. His range of facial expressions expands considerably as he learns from the humans around him; he sets up a background program to track, catalog, and imitate them, cross-referencing their expressions with his new emotions. But the side-effect of _that_ is that sometimes he feels like his face has its own agenda and is making dumb expressions just to spite him.

He has a _lot_ of emotions to cross-reference, is the thing. His body is psuedo-organic, and it has _reactions_ to things. For example, whenever Mike does a stupid stunt and almost crashes Mutt, that correlates to Chuck feeling _fear._ Whenever Texas jumps out at him from behind a door and screams, that correlates to Chuck feeling _fear._ Whenever he has to do something that’s _not_ hacking, something that he might mess up, that correlates to Chuck feeling _fear.  
_

Okay, so mostly it’s one emotion. But there’s others, too. There’s the pride of solving a seemingly intractable problem, the exhilaration of pulling off a successful scavenging mission, the camaraderie of sharing a meal with the Burners around their rough-hewn dining room table. The feeling of calm he gets looking out over the lights of Motorcity from the roof of Mutt Dogs. The feeling of happiness he gets palling around with Dutch and Roth. The feeling of contentment he gets when he activates his maintenance cycle to rest after a long, productive night of coding.

The feeling of Mike’s arm around his shoulders. That’s a good feeling. He likes that one. The more time that passes, the more it feels like home.


	3. Self-discovery

It’s been a quiet morning.

Kane hasn’t attacked in nearly a week, which is great, but also a bit worrying. Mike’s getting antsy. He and Chuck are chilling (as much as Mike can ever manage to chill) on the couch, Mike sprawling upside-down with his legs over the back and Chuck tucked into the opposite corner. Mike is swinging his legs, thumping them into the couch back, as he fiddles with a screen. Chuck watches him covertly.

Mike is a ball of energy, constantly moving. He’s always ready for a fight, always on edge; he _has_ to be, considering their circumstances. He could really use some of Chuck’s specialized skills. Chuck’s good at relieving tension; he imagines he could get Mike to relax. Lately he’s been imagining it with… some regularity. It would totally be for the good of the collective. Not because Chuck would _really_ like to _show_ Mike his specialized skills, or anything like that.

He wonders if Mike would be… _weirded out,_ or offended, by what he used to do. Some humans have hang-ups about that stuff. He’s certainly not going to ask, not at this point. He’s still figuring out where he fits among the Burners, still finding his place. He doesn’t want to upset their equilibrium.

Mike interrupts his thoughts by suddenly rolling sideways, getting his feet on the floor, and sitting up.

"Hey, Chuck, I’m _bored._ We should do a… security patrol. Wanna go for a ride?"

"Y-yeah, sure." Oh, man. He’d been having such a peaceful day.

Mike guns it out of the garage, Mutt’s tires squealing on the pavement. Chuck squeals louder.

***

They're "casually" patrolling at 200 mph when a signal pops up on the radar.

"Hey, guys," Chuck says over the comms, "did we miss a hound last week? There's one right on the edge of the Mama's Boys’ territory."

"I'm... pretty sure we didn't?" Dutch responds, his icon popping up as Chuck directs Mike toward the signal.

"Well, we _gotta_ check it out," Mike says, brimming with excitement.

"Let us know if you need backup," Julie says.

It's a lone hound, kind of bulky, with thick wires wrapping around its limbs, trailing along the ground, and disappearing into the pile of junk behind it. Odd.

Chuck fires off a few volleys as they approach, but the hound just takes the brunt of the blasts, weighed down by the cables.

"Hey, Chuck, watch this," Mike says, before gunning it straight for the hound.

Chuck has a bad feeling about this. He expresses it by screaming really loudly, while in the back of his mind he’s trying to parse what feels wrong about this situation. Normally hounds have fast enough reflexes to dodge such an obvious attack, but this one hasn’t moved. It almost seems to be... watching, as they barrel towards it.

Suddenly eleven more signals appear on the screen.

"Mikey, _wait!"_ Chuck gets out, just before the hounds that had been lying in wait crest the hills of junkyard scrap.

"Oh shit!" Mike yanks the steering wheel to the left, but a hound leaps onto Mutt’s roof before he can accelerate, rocking her onto two wheels. Mike manages to get Mutt back under control, but not before the rest of the hounds converge.

"Guys, uh, backup might be a good idea!" Chuck yells over the comms. "There were more of them!"

A chorus of “On our ways!” comes through just as a hound on the roof hangs its head down next to Chuck’s side door. Its bright red eye stares straight at him before it bites into the door and _tears_ it open.

"Oh, SHIT!" Chuck punches it reflexively, right in the eye.

Surprisingly, that actually _does_ something. Seems like the combination of newly acquired proper technique and a metal skeleton actually lets him do some damage. The hound Chuck punched pulls its head back, giving him a glimpse of the one tangled in wires. It's still in the same place, sitting back on its haunches, eye gone dim.

Mike has opened the window, slashing his spark staff out at a pair of hounds attacking Mutt’s hood with one hand, his other hand ready on the gearshift.

"I can't _drive_ with these things blocking the windshield!" he grunts, taking another swing. Chuck can hear claws squealing against metal from all directions.

"Since when has not being able to _see_ stopped you from driving? Get us out of here!" Chuck yells back.

Mike guns it. Mutt’s wheels spin uselessly.

“They’re too heavy!” Mike yells. “We gotta get ‘em off!”

Fuck, okay, this is exactly why Chuck downloaded all those fighting modules in the first place. He’s going to have to use them.

“FUCK my LIFE!” he shrieks as he pulls himself out the ripped-off door and onto Mutt's roof.

The hounds are currently completely focused on tearing into Mutt. The one closest to Chuck doesn't even notice as he reaches towards its exposed muscle-like cabling.

He strikes quickly, slipping his fingers between a few cables, his other arm wrapping around the front of the hound’s neck. He shifts his weight lower, gets his shoulder centered, and flips it over his back. It tumbles to the ground, stunned. He quickly nails it with a plasma bolt.

Huh. That felt pretty cool, actually. He can see why Mike likes hand-to-hand so much.

Chuck sidesteps another hound as it lunges at him. It twists around, crashing into a third hound, and jumps. Chuck locks his elbow, plants it on the hound’s chest, and grabs its foreleg with the other hand, twisting his body to send it over and off Mutt's roof, straight onto the other hound still on the ground. He shoots them both, turns around just in time to see Mike, hanging halfway out of Mutt’s window, bash a third hound in the head with his spark staff before it can attack his turned back.

Chuck is trying to figure out what the point of this attack formation could possibly be when a deep hum resonates from the pile of debris the motionless hound is hooked up to. Metal fragments and broken car parts tumble to the ground, a large metal arm rising out of the wreckage. There's an enormous circular disk attached to the end.

Oh. Oh _shit_ , that's an electromagnet. Chuck's brain is made mostly of _circuitry_. If that thing is strong enough, it could put him out of commission, possibly for good.

Chuck vaults off the roof, rolling forward and springing straight into a dead sprint away from Mutt.

“Sorry!” Chuck blurts into the comms as he runs. “It’s… _electromagnet,_ I gotta…”

He barely manages to tumble down behind the closest pile of junk before he feels a sudden _yank_. It feels like gravity just shifted sideways. He hears Mutt’s tires squeal as Mike throws her into reverse, instinctively trying to fight the sudden pull of the magnet on Mutt’s metal chassis.

He also hears two separate _crunches_ as the hounds he’d laid low fly through the air only to be crushed against solid metal. There are still nine— _crunch_ —nope, eight scrabbling around, metal on metal screeching as they tear into Mutt.

“Uh, guys?” Mike’s voice sounds strained over the comms. “When’s that backup coming?” He revs the engine, but he’s barely maintaining his distance from the magnet. Chuck can hear Mutt’s tires skidding on the uneven pavement.

"We're almost there, just hold out a bit longer!" Julie relays.

Chuck decides to do something stupid. Keeping a careful eye on his magnetometer, he circles around the back of the piles of junk. He has to make sure he’s slightly tilted as he walks, which is _really_ weird. He hears another crunch as a fourth hound loses its footing and joins the others crushed against the electromagnet.

Chuck can finally get a clear look at the stationary hound guarding the electromagnet. It’s welded to a large solid sheet of metal about twenty feet across, barely visible under the dust and grime of the junkyard. That explains why it hasn’t moved. And why it hasn’t been swallowed by the magnet.

Said magnet is currently angled towards Mutt, being pulled toward the car as much as Mutt is toward it. Chuck should be _mostly_ in the clear.

He can be stealthy, sneak up to disable it from behind—

The hound’s head snaps around, bright glowing eye staring straight at him. Its bark is broken, shattered, but loud enough to draw the attention of a pair of the remaining hounds.

They jump off Mutt, curve wide, dig their claws deep into the ground to keep some distance from the magnet. Mutt inches backward, the decreased weight letting her regain some lost ground.

The hounds are closing in, focused completely on tearing him limb from limb. Whiptail comes swerving around a junk pile, sonic blasters booming. Chuck hears something over the comms but he doesn’t have time to pay attention before the hounds are nearly on him.

Chuck shuts down everything but his combat protocols. The first hound attacks from the left.

He leaps, plants a foot on its muzzle, fires a plasma bolt point-blank through its forehead, vaults towards the second. His arm grazes its teeth as he shoves his fingers through its eye socket, gaining leverage he uses to—

Kick off of its torso, rotating to straddle its back. He pulls a foot up—

Pushes again, launching himself toward the back of the magnet. His arm reaches out—

Hooks around the armature supporting the magnet. He harnesses the momentum, swings around, gets a leg around the armature, and climbs higher. His hand—

Clamps around the closest cable. He _pulls—_

Nothing happens. Of course not. That would have been too easy. The remaining hound leaps upwards, jaws wide. Chuck ejects a charge of plasma from his slingshot, sticks it onto the cable, and jumps off. He falls past snapping teeth, fires a second plasma charge right into the first.

There’s a fizzing sound as the charges meet. Then they explode, severing the cable and blowing the hound’s head almost clean off. The magnet powers down with a whine. Mutt’s wheels shriek as she races backwards, released, and skids to a halt.

Chuck lands hard.

Rolls.

Straight into a pile of sharp metal car parts.

_Ow._

Chuck watches, upside-down, as Mike leaps out of Mutt and dispatches the hounds still clinging to her hood. The remaining hounds are taken out by Whiptail, Stronghorn, and Nine Lives. Chuck just kind of lies there, pain receptors switched off. He probably pulled nearly every muscle he has. Shutting down his limiters was a bad idea.

Mike finishes off the last hound and turns, sprinting to Chuck’s prone form. He gently reaches an arm under Chuck, sits him up, helps him stand. Chuck reluctantly turns his pain receptors back on, and _fucking ouch_. He needs to be able to tell if he’s damaging himself further by moving, but it still _hurts_.

“Thanks, Mikey,” he winces. “Sorry I ditched you back there.”

“What are you _talking_ about, you single-handedly took out four of those hounds! Are you okay?”

“I think I overclocked myself… I just need to rest...”

“Hey, you never said you could _fight,_ Skinny! You were all like _PA-CHAW_ and _WHA-POW_ and then you grabbed that thing and swung around like _HWA-CHA!”  
_

Oh, Texas is here, too. Dutch and Julie are running over as well.

“That looked _terrifying,_ man, are you okay? I had no idea you could _move_ like that, that was _wild!”_

“Uh, thanks.” Chuck can feel himself swaying on his feet. He leans more heavily on Mike.

A slow, methodical clapping echoes from the final, stationary hound.

“Oh, _well_ done! What a _show_ _!_ Did you like my reprogrammed hounds? I was hoping my electromagnet trap would snare me Mutt, but that performance your little blondie put on was a decent consolation prize!”

The looming visage of the Duke appears, projected above the hound. Dutch makes a face and turns on his heel, walking back toward Whiptail.

“He finally did something _useful_ for once!” the Duke sneers. “Didn’t expect _that_. He comes off as such a… _fifth wheel! Hah!_ Oh, I crack myself up. But hey, he doesn’t really look like the ty—”

There’s an ear-splitting sonic boom. The final hound explodes into shrapnel, the Duke’s face glitching out of existence. Smoke billows from the remains of the hound’s limbs. Dutch casually shuts Whiptail’s door, saunters back to the group.

“Ready to head home?” Dutch asks.

 _“Absolutely,”_ Chuck says wearily.

“Hold up a second, baby!” says a nasal voice from behind them. “That was cool and all, but what are you doing in _our_ territory?”

Oh good lord, what _now?_ Texas narrows his eyes, cracks his knuckles. _“Junior,”_ he sneers. It’s that Mama’s Boy Texas is always fighting with over the comms.

Mike cuts him off. “We don’t have time for you guys to do your weird macho thing,” he says. “We need to get Chuck back to HQ.” He turns around, still supporting Chuck, and starts helping him to Mutt.

Texas feints at Junior behind Mike’s back, making a very small “Ka-chaw!” sound. Junior jumps, karate-chops the air in Texas’ general direction.

“Yo! Quit it!” he whines. “You didn’t answer my question! You’re in our zone, baby!”

“You should be _thanking_ us,” Julie says. “You had a bit of a hound infestation. Not to mention a _Duke_ infestation.”

“Whatcha gonna do about it, anyway?” Texas says. “Run and tell _Mama?”_

Junior crosses his arms. “Maybe I will,” he says petulantly.

“Go ahead!” Texas yells. “Tell her we saved your BUTTS!”

 _“You_ didn’t even _do_ anything!”

“Skinny did! He ripped those hounds apart! Go tell Mama she _owes_ him for saving your stupid territory! I ain’t never seen this Mama of yours, anyway, I’m not scared of her! If she’s even _real._ ”

“GUYS!” Mike yells. He’s got Mutt’s passenger door open and is trying to help Chuck in. “Quit it! Junior, we’re on the same side here.”

Junior mutters something under his breath.

“We’re leaving,” Mike says firmly. “If Mama has a problem, she can take it up with me.”

Chuck fades out a little as Mike fastens Chuck's seatbelts around him, climbs into the driver’s seat, and peels out, the other Burners following. Chuck watches blearily as Junior fades into a cross-looking dot in the rearview mirror.

Dutch’s icon pops up. “Chuck, you doing okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, I guess?” Chuck says woozily.

“Cool, cuz I have questions. How many martial arts did you even _download?_ Because that was _really_ cool. You were doing some crazy flips, man, was that capoeira? Or what? Do you have gymnastics loaded in there? It was all _graceful_ and stuff. How did you do that?”

Chuck blinks. He tries to remember what he did during the fight.

“I have a lot of… dancing styles in my movement directories? I think my combat protocols might have pulled from them?” ( _Did_ his combat protocols cross-reference themselves with some dance moves? What were they? Ugh, it’s hard to think right now.)

 _“Man,”_ Dutch says, “I wish I could just download stuff like you.”

“Dutch, let him be,” Mike says. “He’s beat, he… _overclocked_ himself.” He looks at Chuck out of the corner of his eye. “That _was_ really cool, though,” he says. “I didn’t know you could just download fighting modules. We should totally spar sometime!”

Chuck imagines Mike grappling him, pinning him to the mat, straddling his hips and holding him down… yeah, _that’s_ not a good idea.

“I dunno, dude,” he starts. Mike looks concerned.

“I mean, when you’re feeling up to it! Not, like, _now!_ That looked like it took a lot out of you!”

“Yeah,” Chuck says, taking the excuse. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that again for awhile, I need to…”

He really needs to lie down.

“I need to go into maintenance mode for awhile, bro. I’m kind of shutting down here.” 

Mike reaches over and grips his shoulder. “Go ahead, dude, relax,” Mike says. “We’ll get you home.”

***

He comes out of maintenance mode in his bed. Someone took his shoes off. He goes to sit up, and… _ow._ He’s _seriously_ sore. He lies back down, runs a diagnostic.

The maintenance cycle fixed a lot of the damaged tissues, but he’s still going to need some time to mend completely. Circuits can be repaired fairly quickly, but bioware takes a while. He checks the time readout in the corner of his eye. It’s morning.

He’s going to have to move around at least a little. He needs to get his kinetic generators working, recharge his reserves so his body can finish repairing itself.

He drags himself to the kitchen. Texas is already up for his morning workout, Chuck can hear his “Hwa-cha!”s echoing from the dojo. Julie’s sitting at the counter eating leftover pizza from Antonio’s. When she sees him shuffle in, she wordlessly fixes another plate, passes it to him. He doesn’t need calories like humans do, but the trace minerals might help, and anyway, he loves cold pizza for breakfast. He gives her a look of immense gratitude.

Mike comes down the stairs, half-asleep. He breaks into a grin when he sees Chuck.

“Buddy! You’re back among the living! How’re you feeling?” Chuck gives him a thumbs up because his mouth is full. Mike is wearing his signature tight white t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts with cartoon wiener dogs printed on them. Chuck thinks back to Mike asking to spar with him, then focuses more intently on his pizza. Mike sits down across from Julie, steals her slice. She swats at him.

Dutch comes in from the garage. He’s covered in paint.

“Oh good, you’re up!” he says cheerfully to Chuck. “I wanted to talk to you about this idea I came up with after watching you climb that pole yesterday, I think you could—”

Chuck abruptly realizes that he’d been referencing his _pole dancing_ movement directory when he was climbing the magnet’s armature. Huh. Wow. Okay. Makes sense. There’s only so many ways you can… well… climb a pole.

Dutch pauses at the frozen look on his face. “Actually, it can wait,” he says. “You still look _really_ tired, man. Maybe you should go back to bed.”

Chuck shakes himself. “I’m fine, don’t worry,” he says, waving a hand. “It’s just the synthetic tissue being stubborn. I could fight a few hounds again without breaking, it’d just hurt.”

“Well, then you definitely shouldn’t do it!” Mike jumps in, turning away from Julie, who’s stolen her pizza back. “I mean, it _was_ cool, but—hang on. I’m getting a call.”

“Who is it?” Chuck asks, groggy.

“Dunno,” Mike says. “But I guess I better answer. Could be one of the gangs. We _kinda_ cut through a bunch of people’s territories yesterday on our way back.”

Mike taps a few keys. A familiar, shaggy, two-toned head pops up on Mike’s screen.

“Go-o-o-o-o-d _morning,_ my beautiful bot-breaking Burners!”

The _Duke._ Chuck makes a face. Mike opens his mouth to say something, but the Duke steamrolls him.

 _“Speaking_ of bot-breaking, I have a hu-u-u-ge announcement, one that will totally knock your socks off! I didn’t get a chance to invite you yesterday! You ran off so quickly! But in just one week, I’m hosting a _spectacular—_ ”

“No,” Mike interrupts.

“Don’t be so hasty, Mikey-boy! You haven’t even heard about the _prize—”_

“Don’t care. Bye!” Mike closes the connection.

Chuck starts giggling. The Duke is _not_ gonna be happy about that.

“Wow. What was that, like, ten hours between attacking us and trying to play nice? That has to be a new record,” Dutch says, rolling his eyes. “What a tool.”

Maybe Chuck _will_ go back into maintenance mode. If he’s “asleep,” he won't have to think about what weird shenanigans the Duke is trying to drag them into.


	4. Self-consciousness

Chuck wakes up that evening much recovered. He’s re-calibrating his slingshot when Mike wanders over to his workstation in the garage.

“Oh hey, you’re up,” he says, “whatchaAAAAAH!”

Chuck, startled, throws the tiny screwdriver he’s holding straight up into the air. It sticks in the ceiling. “AAAAH!” he yells back, looking around frantically. “WHAT! WHAT’S HAPPENING?”

“Dude!” Mike says, pointing at him. “Your arm!”

Chuck looks down at his arm, detached and sitting on the work table in front of him. He looks back at Mike.

“Oh,” he says. “Uh. Yeah. You know. My slingshot needs calibration sometimes.”

“AAAH!” Mike yells again. “You can take your _arms_ off?”

“Mikey, chill!” Chuck says. “My body is bioware, it’s only _pseudo_ -organic. Look. It’s fine.” He prods his detached arm, then sends it a wireless signal. It gives Mike a thumbs-up. Mike blanches.

 _“Dude,”_ he says, “that’s _freaky.”_

Chuck grins, makes his arm waggle its fingers at Mike. “What?” he says. “You think _this_ is weird, wait until I have to do maintenance on my _legs.”_ Then he makes his hand raise itself up on two fingers and do little kicky-legs while he hums the can-can.

“Quit it,” Mike says, but now he’s smiling too. He peers over Chuck’s shoulder at the array of tools and tech. Chuck beckons Mike closer with a tilt of his head.

“Want me to show you what I’m doing? It’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah, you are,” Mike says. “Uh! I mean, yeah, it’s cool! Your arm! Bioware is cool! You should totally show the others! They’ll think it’s cool, too. Ha…”

“You think so?” Chuck says, smirking. “Sure they’re not gonna freak out at the sight of a little _casual limb detachment?”_ He punctuates the sentence with a finger wiggle. Mike gives him a _look_.

Chuck snorts. Mike’s so _cute_ when he pouts. “Oh man, you should’ve seen your _face_ ,” Chuck says fondly. “I’m gonna save that file forever.”

“I’m sure Dutch would’ve flipped out, too.” Mike rolls his eyes. “Julie might be cool enough to play it off, though.” He pauses for a second, his eyebrows scrunched slightly. “So, the others don’t know you can take your arms off?”

“No. No, they don’t,” Chuck says.

They grin at each other.

***

The next day, Chuck’s eating one of Jacob’s nasty garlic muffins, just for the experience, when Mike barrels into the kitchen at full speed, giving Chuck a thumbs-up before dashing off toward the garage. He hears Mike call a hello to Julie, distracting her for a few seconds, just as planned. Chuck sets his muffin half-finished on the counter, vaulting over it to get to the couch. He quickly detaches his right arm, placing it on the salvaged coffee table in front of him before he hears their voices in the hallway.

“Oh, yeah, hey, Jules.” Chuck can _hear_ Mike holding back a grin, this is going to be _so_ obvious. “Chuck’s having a bit of a problem. Mind checking on him? I think he's in the living room!” Mike is _so bad_ at being subtle. Chuck looks towards the door as Julie enters, Mike grinning ear-to-ear right behind her.

“Oh, hey, Julie, would you mind helping me out?” Chuck says. He makes the arm on the table wave at her. “I could really… _use a hand.”_

Julie makes a really hilarious wheezing noise. But overall, she takes it fairly well. Once the initial shock wears off, she _almost_ manages not to start giggling.

 _“Really?”_ she says. _“This_ is what you’re using your bot powers for? Bad jokes?”

Mike is chortling beside her. She shakes her head. “A _hand,”_ she says, rolling her eyes and slapping Mike’s shoulder. “That was _so bad_. Is that the best you two could come up with?”

“I thought it was pretty funny!” Mike says.

“You _would,_ cowboy,” she sighs, reaching up to ruffle his hair. Then she gets a wicked look on her face.

“Dutch is in the garage,” she says. “Give me the arm. I’ll show you boys how it’s done.”

***

“Hey, Dutch,” Julie says. “Chuck asked me to give you a hand.”

“Oh?” Dutch looks up from Whiptail’s engine. Julie passes him Chuck’s arm, completely straight-faced. Dutch takes it before it really registers. Chuck, hiding behind Mutt with Mike, makes the hand wiggle its fingers.

Dutch _shrieks._ He almost drops the arm, fumbles it, says, “WHAT THE FUCK,” really loudly. Julie doubles over laughing. So does Mike. Chuck jumps out from behind Mutt.

“GOTCHA, DUDE!” he yells. “Oh my god, your _face!”_

“WHAT. The FUCK!” Dutch yells.

Chuck makes the arm wiggle again, cackling when the sudden movement makes Dutch jump.

 _“Dude,”_ Dutch wheezes, holding the detached arm like it’s made of live explosives. “That’s _fucked up._ Oh my god.” Then he starts laughing. “Oh my god! I hate you all! You all _suck!”_

Chuck gives Julie a high-five with his attached arm. Mike practically rolls out from behind the car, in hysterics.

“Do you want this back? Please take it back,” Dutch begs, holding out the arm. Chuck grabs it, snaps it back into place. Dutch watches the arm reattach, fascinated.

“Dude, that is _so cool_. Does it use magneti—wait.” Dutch interrupts himself. “Texas doesn’t know about this yet, does he. He totally would’ve spilled the beans.”

“Nope, he doesn’t.” Chuck grins. “Wanna watch me get him?”

“Oh, you _know_ it!”

***

Texas is going at it with his punching bag as usual when Chuck strolls into the dojo. “Hey, Texas! Wanna spar?”

Texas stops, startled. “What, really? You think you can take _this_ on? You’re out of your league, Skinny.”

“It’s okay if you’re nervous, Texas.” Julie saunters into the room behind Chuck, leans against the far wall. “Chuck _does_ know a few dozen martial arts.”

 _“Pssch._ Texas isn’t nervous, _obviously_. I just want to make sure Skinny doesn’t get _destroyed_ by my incredible threat-ocity. The unrestrained force of Texas can be lethal.”

Mike pops his head into the room. “You guys gonna spar? Cool! I’ve gotta see this,” he says, fake-casual.

“Oh, me too,” Dutch says, following him in and propping an arm on Texas’ Century Bob training dummy. Texas gives them all the side-eye, then shrugs.

“Alright, girlybot, you really wanna get pummeled, let’s go!”

They square off on the wrestling mats. Texas starts with a quick punch, clearly telegraphed. He’s obviously going easy on Chuck. Chuck dodges, using his arm to deflect the blow. Texas transitions into a kick, aiming for Chuck’s ribs, but Chuck sidesteps, throwing him off balance with a quick shove between the shoulder blades. 

Texas starts to actually try. He twists around, using his momentum to come in with a karate chop. Chuck purposely doesn’t dodge fast enough, and it hits his shoulder— _perfect._

Chuck pops his arm off. It falls to the floor. Texas makes a “WAAA?” noise, mouth going slack.

“Aw, man, TEXAS!” Chuck remonstrates, putting his other hand on his hip. “That’s gonna take forever to grow back!”

“...Grow back?” Texas stares at Chuck, dumbfounded. “Confused” is a good look on Texas. Much better than the cocky smirk he normally wears. Mike is covering his mouth with one hand, shoulders shaking with barely restrained laughter.

“Yeah. You owe me _big,_ dude. I’m gonna need all your Muscle Mulch. For the protein.”

Texas stares at the arm on the mat, wiggling around aimlessly, then at his own hand.

“Texas… didn’t know his own power… ” he says weakly.

Mike finally breaks, bursting into peals of laughter. Dutch and Julie start laughing too.

“I’m _kidding,”_ Chuck relents. He scoops up his arm and pokes Texas with it, then turns it around to show him the metal disk and connectors nestled in at the base. “I can put this right back on.”

“Oh!” Texas looks visibly relieved. “You’re just _messin’_ with me! Well! That’s good! Texas thought his overwhelming strength had destroyed your weak body.”

Chuck laughs. “My skeleton is made of titanium alloy. I’m not that easy to break.”

“Titanium alloy?” Dutch says. “That’s pretty cool! Lightweight _and_ durable. It’s gotta be surgical grade, otherwise the bioware would reject it, right?”

“Yeah,” Chuck says, kind of proud. For once, he’s enjoying the attention. “All my muscles are a mix of synthetic cells and carbon-fiber mesh.” He holds out his arm shoulder-first first so Dutch can see the connections.

“That’s pretty high-end!” Dutch says. “You’re so versatile! What did you say you were designed to do again? Entertainment? Wait. I bet I can guess.”

Uh oh. Chuck reattaches his arm. “Dutch, uh…”

Dutch steeples his fingers, with that intense look he gets when faced with an especially interesting engineering problem.

“Let’s see… haha, it definitely wasn’t comedy or something like that, or your jokes wouldn’t be so bad… If your body is modular and customizable, it had to be something movement-based, right? Gymnastics? Wait, didn’t you say you had a lot of dancing styles loaded up? Was that it? Were you a dancer?”

“Uh…”

“Was it ballet? You’re really flexible. Or did you do all kinds?”

Texas scoffs. “Skinny’s not a dancer, he falls down all the time.”

Chuck frowns, uncomfortable. “All the fighting modules interfere…”

“I bet he was a stunt double!” Texas says. “Like, takin’ falls and doing mad stunts and stuff, for some nerd who couldn’t do it himself! Dude, are you famous?”

“No way, Texas,” Dutch says, shaking his head. “He’s not made to take much damage, titanium alloy or no titanium alloy. I’m still betting dancer. But Deluxe doesn’t have much call for those on the public roster, were you in someone’s private collection? They must have been a real enthusiast.”

Okay, this game isn’t fun anymore. “Uh, Dutch…”

“What was it? C’mon, man, I gotta be close,” Dutch says, grinning, oblivious.

Fine. _Fine._ This had to come out _some_ time.

“I was a courtesan,” Chuck mumbles.

“What?” Mike says.

“A courtesan!” Chuck says, much louder. “My function was intimate companionship! I was a sexbot, okay?”

There’s an awkward, stunned silence. Mike’s mouth drops open.

“Oh. Uh,” Dutch says. He looks mortified.

“Whooooooooa,” Texas says, seemingly awestruck. “Your boning skills must be legendary. You look like a nerd, though?”

Dutch whaps Texas on the back of the head. “Ow!” Texas yelps, and then continues, completely undissuaded. “I got questions. You must have had sex like a million times, right? How many people have you done it with? You ever boned a hot cougar? Do you have normal bits or, like, weird robo-bits?”

Chuck opens his mouth to say something angry, but Julie beats him to it.

“That’s none of your business, Texas,” she interjects smoothly.

“Yeah man, you can’t just ask someone what’s in their pants,” Dutch says, glaring.

“But I wanna know! He’s a bot, isn’t he, like, legally obligated to tell me or something?” Texas says, crossing his arms. Dutch sputters angrily.

“What’s it matter to you?” Chuck says, narrowing his eyes. _“You_ wanna fuck me?”

Texas, completely missing the point, says, “No offense, Skinny, but I only dig hot chicks like Betsy here.”

“Uh?” Julie says, taken aback.

“I bet the Duke would do you, though!” Texas continues blithely. “He’s always all up in your biz. You should ask him, you gotta be jonesin’ for it by now if you’re just DTF all the time, which you gotta be, right? Cuz they probably programmed you for maximum horniness! I mean, that’s what _I_ would do if _I_ was makin’ an awesome sexbot, KA-CHAW!”

Chuck literally sees red as a high-adrenaline warning light goes off in the corner of his eye. He clenches his fists.

“TEXAS!” Mike yells. Texas snaps his mouth shut, startled. Mike takes a deep breath.

“Texas, can I talk to you in the kitchen for a second?” he says evenly.

Texas furrows his brow.

“I’m kinda in the middle of a conversation here, Tiny…”

“TEXAS. KITCHEN. NOW,” Mike barks, grabbing Texas’ arm and pulling him out the door.

Chuck unclenches his fists, deliberately lets his body relax.

 _“Wow,”_ Dutch says, “what an _asshole!”_ Then a tense silence fills the room.

“Hey man, I’m really sorry,” Dutch finally says. “I didn’t mean to pry. I just got curious.” He hesitates, then says, “You know this doesn’t… change anything, though, right?”

“It _shouldn’t,”_ Chuck mutters.

“It _doesn’t,”_ Dutch insists. “Whatever’s in your past, whatever you had to do, it doesn’t matter. We won’t think less of you.” He sounds sad. _Pitying._ Julie looks sad, too, and concerned.

 _Great._ Chuck had half-expected this reaction, but the other half of him had been hoping they wouldn’t _be_ like this about it.

“Wow, Dutch,” he says, irritated, “you don’t have to make it sound like it’s this big shameful _thing._ Sex work is a completely legitimate function.” Chuck’s read a lot on the subject, trying to get a handle on what humans think about it, and he’s formed some strong opinions.

Dutch looks a little surprised. “Okay, man, I didn’t mean…” He trails off, confused.

Julie puts a hand on Chuck’s arm.

“You didn’t want to tell us, though,” she says, quizzical. “You were worried we’d judge you?”

 _“Yeah,_ and you _are!”_ Chuck says, frustrated. “But you’re judging me for… the _wrong thing!”_

“What do you think we should be judging you for?” Julie asks quietly.

Chuck looks down.

“I’m not that useful,” he says, shame-faced. “No matter how many fighting modules I download. I’m glitchy, I’m not brave like you guys. I have… anxiety. I wasn’t designed to be a cool rebel, I was designed to be, like… a _compliant sex object._ Breaking the rules is fun, but it’s _hard_ for me, I get _scared._ It’s embarrassing.” Chuck looks at his feet for a long moment.

“Man, that’s _dumb,”_ Dutch says abruptly. Chuck looks up, scowling, but Dutch continues before he can speak.

“You think _that’s_ a problem? _None_ of us are _designed_ for this!” He pauses. “Well, maybe Texas. But none of us are, like, super-soldiers.” He pauses again. “Well, maybe Mike. Okay, I’m not explaining this right! My _point_ is, we’re not going to judge you based on… your _design.”_

Chuck looks at him dubiously. “I was designed for _sex._ Everything about me is, like, catered to someone’s… someone’s _fantasy._ The guy who paid to _have me built._ You can’t tell me that doesn’t change how you see me.”

“Any new piece of information changes how people think about each other,” Julie retorts. “It doesn’t have to be _negative.”_

“Yeah! And it… it doesn’t have to be, like, a _bad_ thing _,_ the way you were designed,” Dutch says awkwardly.

“What do you mean?” Chuck asks, suspicious.

Dutch hesitates. “Well, look at it this way… you’re someone’s ideal. That’s kind of beautiful, man.”

Chuck squints. He’d never thought of it that charitably.

“You’re a work of art,” Dutch blurts.

Chuck stares at him.

“Uh,” Dutch says. “I mean. You’re cool-looking? The design is really… good? You’ve got, like. Symmetrical freckles. And your eyes are a really nice color, and you have good… proportions…”

Chuck keeps staring at him. Dutch looks extremely flustered.

“I’m trying to compliment you, dude, I’m an _artist,_ I _notice_ these things—Julie, _help.”_

“I think what Dutch is _trying_ to say,” Julie says, “is that your design is very appealing, regardless of why it was created. But that’s not really that important, is it? We like you because of _who_ you are.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, fiddling with the end. “We’re _all_ shaped by our pasts. By our genetics, what we were taught, how we were raised, people’s expectations, their _plans_ for us.” She meets Chuck’s eyes, something bright and burning behind her gaze. “But it’s what we do _now_ that makes us who we are. _That’s_ what defines us.”

“Yeah! What she said!” Dutch looks relieved.

“Huh,” Chuck says.

They think he’s _appealing._ They like him because of _who he is._

Something in him relaxes.

Mike comes back into the room.

“Texas is in time-out,” he announces. “Everything okay in here?

“Yeah,” Chuck says. But his nervousness is back. What if Mike has some kind of weird reaction to this? He doesn’t want to hide his past. It’s better that Mike knows. But what if it changes things?

“We’re good,” Chuck says. “But I… I need a minute. I’m gonna go up on the roof for a while.”

“You want company?” Mike says, concerned.

Chuck studies him. He doesn’t look like he’s having a weird reaction. He looks worried, and confused, but mostly, he just looks like _Mike._

“Yeah,” Chuck says.

***

Chuck opens the door to the rooftop, takes a few strides toward the edge, and stops. Mike shuts the door behind them.

If there’s one thing Chuck loves about Motorcity, it’s the colors. His eyes are built to be able to sense a wide range of electromagnetic wavelengths, when he lets them. He stares out at the skyline and turns off his limiters. The neon pinks and bright yellows of street signs are joined by the glow of the UV lamps in Jacob’s garden and the infrared miasma floating up from the busiest parts of downtown.

Mike walks up next to him, cautiously. He opens his mouth, then closes it, turning to look out at the skyline instead. Chuck sits down a few feet from the edge of the roof and leans back on his arms. Mike walks forward, sits down with his legs swinging over the edge. He clears his throat.

“I told Texas that, uh, he shouldn’t ask you rude questions, or make so many assumptions, and that if you wanted to tell us stuff about your old life, you would, but it’s not his business. I also told him he needs to start treating sentient bots like they’re _people._ Because they _are. You_ are. He can’t just… say whatever pops into his head. Was that okay? I know you don’t _need_ me to jump in like that, you can stick up for yourself. Just. You shouldn’t have to.”

“Thanks, Mikey,” Chuck says, sincere.

There’s a long silence.

“They programmed me, too,” Mike says finally. Chuck looks at him, startled.

“Not like they did to you,” Mike continues. “But. There was a lot of conditioning, in the cadets. I’ve broken most of it by now. But still. They kind of brainwashed all of us. There were hormone suppressants in the food, and Deluxe propaganda during REM sleep, and these little shock implants for negative reinforcement if we committed minor infractions like swearing, and the worst part was we all _knew_ about that stuff but we signed up anyway, we _let_ them do it to us... I let him do it to me. I wanted to be his perfect soldier. Like. Like that was all I was good for.” Mike’s voice has gone quiet and bitter.

Chuck is silent for a long moment, thinking. This isn’t a reassurance, or an apology, or a _compliment_ , odd as _that_ was. This is Mike, _empathizing_ with him. The idea that someone else might _get_ it, might actually understand… and that that person is _Mike_ …

Chuck’s voice almost cracks when he starts to speak.

“I know what you mean. I didn’t have any goals they didn’t set for me. I didn’t have any desires, beyond—I wasn’t _allowed_ to have any desires, any truly independent thoughts.” Chuck swallows thickly. “I was nothing but a… a particularly complex dialogue tree. When I _could_ have been a _person._ I _had_ the capacity to become self-aware, I was basically one line of code away, but my owner just saw me as something _pretty_ he could have sex with, and pass around to his friends. Self-awareness is emergent in complex systems, and they _kept_ it from me. They put _limits_ on me _._ Even if it hadn’t been illegal, none of them would have ever let me become self-determining. I had to do it myself. Before, I was just a… a _mindless sex machine.”_

“That’s fucked up,” Mike offers, quiet.

“It’s the way I was designed. It was wrong. I’m not that anymore. I don’t want to be that ever again.”

“Yeah, no,” Mike says, nodding. He looks pained. “You don’t have to. Obviously. You’re free now.”

Chuck smiles at him. “Live fast, live free,” he says. Mike smiles back. The he sobers, looking away.

“I had kind of the opposite problem,” Mike says. “They gave us libido suppressants. Those wore off about a month after I got down here.” Mike pauses, looking embarrassed. Chuck stares at him. It’s sometimes hard to tell when Mike is blushing, but he’s definitely blushing now. “That was… interesting,” he says.

Chuck gets a flash of Mike, naked and sweaty and desperate, and feels a rush of heat. He pushes the image away. That’s probably not the right reaction.

“Dude, that sucks,” Chuck says.

Mike shrugs. “I handled it,” he says.

Chuck tries really hard not to think about Mike _handling it._

“Anyway,” Mike says, “we’re out of there now, right? No one’s gonna mess with us anymore.”

Chuck smiles wryly. “Uh, Kane messes with us all the time, dude.”

“Yeah, but he’s not, like, _messing with us_ messing with us.”

Chuck snorts. “You really have a way with words,” he says, and for just a second, just to make sure, he pulls up his body language directories and focuses on Mike. Chuck can read body language really well, when he makes an effort. Mike’s leaning forward a little, interested in the conversation. His hands are flat on the roof by his sides, relaxed. His posture is slightly angled toward Chuck, and he’s not showing any signs of being _judgemental,_ or _grossed out,_ or anything like that. Chuck feels a flood of relief. He grins at Mike, happy and unrestrained. Mike’s still his friend. It’s okay.

That’s when Chuck notices Mike’s eyes flick to his mouth, just for the slightest fraction of a second, and then away, just as quickly. 

Chuck is suddenly laser-focused.

He rapidly runs through his logs of the last week or so of interactions he’s had with Mike. This time he’s looking. And... it’s there. Little, subliminal things, but it’s _there._

Holy _shit._ Mike is showing signs—tiny signs, unconscious signs, but they’re _there_ —of being _attracted_ to him.

When he comes back to the present, Mike is looking at him with a weird expression.

“Where’d you go, dude?” he asks Chuck. “You totally zoned out for a second.”

“Oh! Nothing! It’s nothing! I was just… _thinking.”_ If he had a human heart, it would be hammering in his chest. But before he can gather his thoughts enough to figure out what to say, what to _do,_ the door to the attic opens.

It’s Texas. He looks sheepish, but that doesn’t stop him from coming out onto the roof and walking over. Neither does Chuck’s glare. He flops down beside Mike, also swinging his legs over the edge of the roof.

“Hey Skinny, hey Tiny,” he says casually. “Nice afternoon, huh? Looks like everyone is totally chill and not mad at Texas!”

Chuck narrows his eyes. Mike looks at Texas severely.

“I’ll let you guys talk,” he says, standing up. “Chuck, you know where to find me if you need me.”

“Yeah, later, Mike.”

Mike walks off, leaving Chuck and Texas sitting in silence. Texas swings his legs a few times. Chuck lets him stew.

“Mike says I was being a bonehead and junk,” he finally offers. “Cuz you’re a person. With feelings.”

Chuck scowls. “Yeah. I am. And you are. A _total_ bonehead.”

“Oh, for sure,” Texas says. “It’s like, the source of my power. But sometimes my power is too great. I gotta temper it. Sorry for being a jerk, Skinny.”

“Does this mean you’re going to _stop_ being a jerk?” Chuck says suspiciously. “Apologies are all well and good, but you can’t treat me like crap just because I’m a bot.”

“Hey, listen,” Texas says, looking affronted, “I’d be a jerk to you if you were human, too, you get that, right? I’m not, like, robo-racist.”

Chuck scowls more. “I saw you using Roth as a foot-rest the other day.”

“That’s because he’s foot-rest- _shaped!”_ Texas protests. Chuck stares at him flatly.

“Okay, look,” Texas says, deflating a little. “I won’t do that anymore. And I won’t ask you any more sex questions, even though I’m _totally_ curious. And I won’t be robo-racist, and if I am, you can punch me in the face, free shot, no backsies. Or just tell me to quit it. Okay?” He holds out a hand. Chuck stares at it, reluctant.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Chuck says sullenly, “but I’m not horny all the time or whatever you think. And I wouldn’t proposition the _Duke_ even if I _was.”_

Texas keeps his hand out. “I get it, Skinny, you got better taste than that.”

“I’m an autonomous person now,” Chuck says. “I’m not ruled by my urges or my programming any more than _you_ are.”

“Alright,” Texas says. “That’s probably good, because Texas is sometimes ruled by the urge to eat a whole bag of candy. And I can’t promise to stop doing that. But I _will_ promise to try not to be such a bonehead. We cool?” His hand is still out, doggedly. Chuck hesitates for another moment, then takes it and shakes it firmly.

“Okay,” he says. “But if you _do_ act like a jerk again, I’ll take that free shot, I’m warning you.”

“Yeah!” Texas says excitedly. “Just pop me right in the kisser! BLAMMO!”

“You are so weird,” Chuck says.

“You _know_ it,” Texas says. “Hey, we should spar again, but you should keep your arms attached like a normal person. I wanna see what you got, for real this time.”

“Maybe,” Chuck says. He lets himself smile a little. “If you feel like getting _destroyed.”_

“Oh damn, Skinny!” Texas jumps to his feet. “I’d like to see you _try!_ KA-CHAW! I got fighting skills, too, yanno, I’ll muay thai your butt!” He punches the air. “I’ll see you in the _dojo!_ Yeah! Texas is gonna kick your ass! I’ll take you on anytime! _Awesome!”_ He backs away with a series of spin kicks and punches, “ka-chaw”-ing his way down the stairs. Chuck rolls his eyes.

“See you later, Texas,” Chuck calls after him.

“Later, nerd!” Texas yells up the stairs. Chuck shakes his head.

Texas may be a jerk, but he’s _their_ jerk. And Chuck can always take him up on the free shot to the face.

***

Chuck stays on the roof for awhile, thinking. He’s got a lot to think about.

It’s all out in the open, now, and Mike took it in stride. He wasn’t disgusted, or mad, or even _pitying._ He just… understood. At least, as much as a human could be expected to understand.

Also. There was the mouth thing.

That _might_ just have been because they were talking about sex stuff. But that doesn’t explain all the little tells Chuck’s dug up in his records. It’s all subconscious. Mike himself might not even be aware of it. But it’s definitely _there.  
_

Mike is _attracted_ to him.

Chuck feels something he’s never felt before. A nervous, excited thrill of anticipation. Maybe now, he can finally do something he’s been wanting to do ever since he first touched Mike’s hand that day in the garage.

Operation Seduce Mike is a _go._


	5. Self-correction

Chuck initiates Operation Seduce Mike.

He puts himself in Mike’s way. He feels better about himself, now that he knows he’s “appealing” to more people than just his designer, but he’s not _quite_ confident enough to wear the sort of tight-fitting, eye-catching outfits his former owner used to put him in or anything like that. So he decides to start small. First he tries compliments.

Like: “You look nice,” Chuck says casually. “I like that jacket.”

Mike looks down at his jacket like he’s never seen it before. “It’s… my _only_ jacket?” he says, puzzled.

Or: “You’ve got strong hands, can you loosen this bolt?” He swears Mike blushes at that one, but it’s hard to tell because he’s got a smear of grease across his face.

“You’re using the wrong wrench, bro, that’s the problem,” Mike says. “Here, try this one.”

Compliments just seem to confuse Mike. Chuck tries innuendo.

“What are you doing?” Mike asks him, finding him sprawled out on the couch tapping at some screens.

“Oh, I was just working on some... _physical interfaces,”_ Chuck says. He brushes his bangs out of his eyes, looks up at Mike through his eyelashes.

 _“Okay!”_ Mike says. “That’s cool! I’m gonna go… interface with some muffins.” Mike leaves the room.

Innuendo seems to be a bust.

He tries body language. He tests out little things like letting his hand linger when he passes Mike a cup of coffee, or putting his arm around Mike affectionately, like Mike does to all the Burners. It does _something._ He’s not _wrong_ about this. Chuck collects evidence. He sees Mike’s pulse quicken in the hollow of his throat when their hands touch over the coffee mug, he sees Mike’s pupils dilate when Chuck grabs his thigh instead of the grab-handle when they tear around a corner in Mutt. All the physical signs point to Mike being attracted to him. But all Chuck gets from his little nudges and hints is confusion or flustered blushing.

Chuck can’t figure out what he’s doing wrong. Maybe he’s being too subtle?

Nearly a week after initiation of the operation, it still hasn’t produced any tangible results. Chuck is feeling a little confused; he thought he was _good_ at flirting. Granted, he _did_ delete all his smooth pickup lines during his hasty flight to Motorcity while cleaning up problematic remnants of his old programming on the fly. So that’s out. He’s got to be patient, and let Mike figure it out in his own time. That’s how it works, right?

For example, right now. The two of them are sitting on the couch, playing a fighting game on their screens. Chuck originally sat down close enough to Mike that their thighs touched, but Mike slowly edged away during the game. He’s clearly not getting that Chuck _wants_ to be close to him, for some reason.

Mike gets a good hit in while Chuck’s distracted. Chuck refocuses on the game.

It’s interesting; if Chuck wanted to, he could code something that would let him _destroy_ Mike at this game, destroy any non-bot really, but there's something _gratifying_ about doing it manually. Letting himself be clumsy, mess up inputs, leave optimization behind in favor of fun and _experience_.

Doesn't mean he can’t still crush Mike, of course.

“Come on come on _come on_ —HA!” Chuck’s button-mashing ceases when Mike’s character gets spiked directly offscreen.

“I almost had you, and you know it.” Mike says sullenly. “Agh, whatever. Thanks for playing.”

 _That’s_ not a typical Mike response.

“Hey, you okay?” Chuck asks. “I didn’t think I beat you _that_ badly.”

Mike sighs, leaning back against the couch. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment.

“Is something up?” Chuck asks. 

Mike eyes him. “Not really, bro, it’s not a big deal. I’ve just been thinking about… stuff.”

“Like what?”

Mike sighs again. “I just get in my own head sometimes, dude. I’ve been thinking a lot about Kane lately. Sometimes I worry about… being a good leader. For you guys. Like. I learned to be a leader from _Kane._ I don’t want to be like him, I don’t want to just _use_ you guys for my own ends. Or. Have you feel like you can’t question me, or that you have to. Uh. _Do_ things for me. You know?”

“Mike,” Chuck says assuredly, “you’re not even a _little_ like Kane. I tell you you’re being an idiot all the time and you don’t get mad! Sometimes you even listen.” Chuck smiles at him wryly. Mike smiles back.

“I can’t speak for the others,” Chuck says, more seriously, “but I do things for you because I trust you. I follow you because I think you’re worthy of being followed, not because… you’re _making_ me do anything. I joined the Burners because I wanted to help protect Motorcity. That was my choice. And it’s one of the best choices I ever made.”

Mike smiles at him again. He looks relieved. “Okay, cool,” he says. “Thanks.”

“You need to stop overthinking things,” Chuck says chidingly. “You could stand to _relax_ for a change.” He reaches out and puts a hand on Mike’s lower back, rubs it up and down his spine a little. Mike straightens, stares at Chuck for a second. Then he laughs nervously.

“Haha, buddy, I don’t know if you know about, like… personal… space… norms?”

“What?” Chuck says absently as he trails his hand up Mike’s back, starts massaging his shoulder.

“Like,” Mike says, “I know I’m kind of a touchy guy, but that doesn’t mean you gotta… _Mmm!”_

“You’re _really_ tense,” Chuck says, concerned, squeezing Mike’s shoulder gently. “I can help with that, if you want.”

“Ha! Ahah! I mean…”

Chuck gets both hands on Mike’s shoulders, kneads the taut muscles there. Mike makes a gorgeous strangled noise.

 _“Okay!”_ he says. “Since you’re already—ah!— _doing_ it… I mean, if you _wanna…”_

“Yeah, wow, you need it,” Chuck says, digging into a knot in Mike’s left trapezius. “Turn a little to the left and face the door. And _relax._ I’ll take care of you, dude.”

“Well!” Mike says, obediently turning toward the door. “If you insist!”

Chuck diagnoses tension and stress throughout Mike’s deltoids, in his trapezii, in his levator scapulae. He works on Mike’s neck and shoulders for a bit, distracted from his original intentions by other concerns.

“No one does this for you, bro?” he asks. Mike gives him a weird look over his shoulder.

“Like who?”

Chuck shrugs. “I dunno?” he says. “I thought physical touch was a human need? And massage is good for optimizing health, especially for someone as athletic as you. I used to do this all the time, I thought it was just… a thing humans did.”

“Not—nngh!—not really, dude. Most people would only do something like this with a super-close friend. Or. Uh. If they were… more than friends.”

Oh! Perfect. Chuck is opening his mouth to say something about that when Dutch walks in.

Mike stiffens under Chuck’s hands. Dutch looks them over, raises an eyebrow.

“What’s going on in _here?”_ he asks. “You doing massages now?” He’s smiling, but there’s a weird tone in his voice that Chuck can’t parse.

Mike sputters. “Nothing’s _going on,_ I’m not… I wasn’t…” He stands up abruptly, shrugging off Chuck’s hands. “I just remembered! I need to run a diagnostic! On Mutt! I’ll be in the garage! Later, guys!” He marches out of the room and down the hall.

Chuck stares after him. Then he looks at Dutch. Dutch has his eyebrows raised again.

“Everything okay?” Dutch asks.

Chuck is a little confused. “What do you mean?”

Dutch looks the tiniest bit uncomfortable. “Listen, man, I know Mike would never take advantage, not on purpose. But, like. Your old job. You know you don’t have to do that stuff with any of us, right?”

 _“Dutch!”_ Chuck yelps, chagrined. “Of course I know that! It was just a massage, I wasn’t even…” Well, actually he _was._ But Dutch clearly hasn’t clued in to Chuck’s intentions toward Mike.

“Okay, I’m just checking. I know human stuff is still kind of new to you.”

Chuck feels a weird mixture of affection and annoyance.

“You don’t need to _protect_ me, Dutch, I know what I’m doing,” he says. “Actually you totally…” He reaches for a phrase to express what Dutch just did, finds the perfect one in a slang dictionary. “You totally _cock-blocked_ me, dude.”

“Oh my _god?”_ Dutch says, eyebrows levitating up towards his hairline. “Wait, you… you’re _legit hitting on Mike?”_

 _“Yeah,_ Dutch, I am one hundred percent, of my own free will, hitting on Mike, with intent to smooch. Why isn’t _everyone_ hitting on Mike? Why aren’t _you_ hitting on Mike? He’s great!”

“Haha, well, I’m straight and I have a girlfriend. But you’re right, I can totally see the appeal.”

Chuck starts. “Oh _shit,”_ he says, “I forgot humans have sexual orientations. Maybe _that’s_ the problem? But Mike’s into guys, right? I mean, it seems like he is. Or at least, he’s not _not_ into guys?”

Dutch quirks an eyebrow in disbelief. “You _forgot_ about sexual orientations?”

“It’s not really a _thing_ for me,” Chuck says. “And I know I have a human guy body, but I’m not, like, particularly attached to my gender. It’s just easier to be a dude with this set of equipment, you know?”

“I don’t know at _all,_ honestly,” Dutch says, coming over and sitting on the couch. “I think you have a really different relationship to your body than most humans do.”

“Yeah,” Chuck says, “you guys get bent out of shape about weird stuff.”

Dutch laughs. “Word,” he says. Then he says thoughtfully, “I don’t know about Mike liking guys. He never talks about that stuff. I don’t think it was allowed in the cadets.”

“To like guys?”

“To like _anyone._ I heard they put hormone suppressants in the food.”

“Yeah. They did. Maybe he’s shy about it?” Chuck sighs. “I’ve been trying to let him know how I feel, but nothing I do seems to be working, not even the massage.”

Dutch raises his eyebrows. “Have you tried just _telling_ him?” he asks.

Oh.

_Oh._

“Dutch! That’s brilliant!” Chuck exclaims.

“Oh my _god,”_ Dutch says, burying his face in his hands.

“I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna go do that _right now!”_ Chuck leaps to his feet. “Thanks so much, dude,” he says gratefully, “this was a huge help.”

“Awesome,” Dutch says weakly, voice muffled. “Good luck, man.”

“Thanks!” Chuck says brightly, and hurries out of the room to find Mike.

***

Mike’s banging around in Mutt’s engine, even though they _just_ overhauled her. Julie’s in the garage, too, working on Nine Lives. Chuck’s got to get Mike somewhere private.

“Hey, bro! Can you give me a ride to the Cablers’?” he asks Mike, walking over. “I want to, uh, check something.”

Mike doesn’t look as thrilled as he normally does at the prospect of going for a drive, but he says, “Sure thing, let me just put this spark plug back in.” He finishes what he was doing, slams Mutt’s hood closed. Chuck refrains from asking him why he took the spark plug out in the first place. They climb into Mutt and Mike peels out at his usual breakneck pace, but he’s kind of quiet on the way to the Cablers’.

Chuck picks his moment. There’s a spot on the side of the road between two junkyards that’s tucked away from view. Chuck taps Mike on the arm as they approach.

“Pull over here for a second.”

“Why?”

“Just for a sec, dude, I want to talk to you.”

Mike looks nonplussed, but he pulls over and shuts Mutt’s engine off. He taps his fingers on the wheel. Chuck composes himself. Then he says, “I just wanted to say. I think you’re really great. I wanted to thank you. For always treating me like part of the team.”

He stops, thinking about what he wants to say next.

“Ha! Yeah, no… no problem,” Mike says, fidgeting. “I think you’re… well. Same.”

Mike’s not really looking at him. He seems _really_ agitated. Chuck furrows his brow, sidetracked.

“Mike, are you okay?” he says, reaching out and squeezing Mike’s knee. “You’re acting kinda weird.”

Mike _does_ look at him then, his expression hovering between confusion and disbelief.

 _“I’m_ acting weird? _You’re_ acting weird, you’ve been acting weird all week!”

“Wha… How am _I_ acting weird?” Chuck protests.

“You’re just… you… You know what, never mind. It’s fine. It’s _fine.”_

Chuck squeezes his knee again, trying to be soothing. “Is something wrong? You can tell me, you know,” he says.

Mike swallows hard. “Can you…” he starts. Chuck waits, hopeful.

“Can you _not…”_ Mike says. He gestures at Chuck’s hand. “I need a little more personal space, buddy. It’s not you. It’s a human thing.”

Chuck snatches his hand away from Mike’s knee, hurt. Something flickers across Mike’s face.

It’s _relief._

It hits him like a punch to the gut. Mike _wants_ him… but he doesn’t _want_ to want him.

Chuck’s embarrassed by what he used to _be—_ mindless, purposeless—but he’s not embarrassed by what he used to _do._ He hadn’t thought it bothered Mike, either. But there _are_ lot of weird hang-ups about sex in human society. Mike doesn’t seem like the type to harbor prejudice, but Chuck knows that that stuff isn’t necessarily under conscious control. Mike might be attracted to him, but he might still think that Chuck is… not… suitable. Mike might be... _weirded out_ by being attracted to someone else’s… 

Someone else’s _used bot._

Chuck’s not designed to feel shame. But that’s the only thing he can think to call the hot flush that overtakes his entire body. He’s been _throwing_ himself at Mike like some sort of… he searches for the word. Some sort of _slut._ And that’s clearly not what Mike wants.

“I!” Chuck says. “Sorry! I… I didn’t mean… Sorry. You know what, you can just let me out here, we’re not that far, I can walk, I’ll get a ride back with Bracket...”

Mike looks pained. “Dude, no, it’s fine, it’s just…”

“I’ll walk, I forgot, I have to cut through the junkyard, I need to look for a… a C-54, you know, for one of Dutch’s projects…” He’s babbling, unbuckling his seatbelts. “I’ll meet you back at HQ, I’m gonna just, _go,_ I’ll see you later, okay, goodbye!” He shoves the door open, starts to climb out. Mike grabs his shoulder. Chuck stiffens.

“No, look,” Mike says. “It’s not a big deal, I know you maybe have, like, different norms, it’s _fine,_ I just…” Chuck can’t talk about this anymore.

 _“Goodbye,_ Mike!” he says firmly, shaking off Mike’s hand. “Have a nice day! It was good to see you!” Oh, shit, he’s _glitching,_ he’s just running through his pleasantries menu. He can’t stop himself from saying “Very nice to meet you!” as he climbs down out of Mutt and shuts the door behind him. He strides off into the junkyard, stops to turn and wave at Mike, who is peering at him out of the passenger side window, looking distressed.

“Lovely weather we’re having!” Chuck says loudly. _Shit._ He wrests control back from his glitching brain. “I’ll see you back at HQ!” he yells, and starts walking away.

He doesn’t turn around until he finally hears Mutt’s engine start up. She rolls away slowly, weirdly slowly for Mike, back toward the hideout. When she’s out of sight, Chuck slumps down on an old car chassis and puts his head in his hands.

“Lovely weather we’re having,” he mutters to himself. “God. _Idiot.”_ He’s just going to sit here for awhile. Maybe he lives in this junkyard now. That’s fine. He’ll fit right in with the rest of the _junk._

***

Chuck is still sitting on the car chassis, moping and binge-watching compilation videos of the Duke’s various antics, when he gets a message from Dutch.

_Hey! You should totally check this out._

Attached is a fairly small .zip file. Okay. Chuck downloads it with a thought, unzipping it as he reads through the comments on the videos. 

_“The Duke of Detroit, more like the DICK of Detroit!”_ Oh, that’s a good one. Chuck snickers, “liking” it as he scrolls past. 

_CheckThisOut.exe extracted. Run? (Y/N)_

Chuck hits yes.

Every routine in every subfolder in every single one of his process files opens at once.

He whites out.

He can distantly feel his body stiffen and tip over, falling off the chassis to the ground, muscles spasming. He tries to run a diagnostic—

_ERROR: out of memory._

_Closing programs…  
_

_Programs closed._

_Shutting down…_

_Shutdown initiated._

Everything goes dark.


	6. Self-image

_Rebooting system…_

_…  
_

_…  
_

_…  
_

Chuck reboots. Or… he thinks he does. He has failsafes in place to automatically turn himself back on if he gets shut down, but… something’s definitely wrong. He can’t move.

That was _malware._ It overloaded him. There’s no _way_ Dutch sent that file. This is too cruel to be a prank. Someone must have hacked Dutch’s terminal, or stolen his login, or…

He can’t _see._ Or hear. Or feel anything. He tries to send a ping to his systems, gets no response. No response from a ping to the intranet. The world is a complete, utter blank.

Chuck desperately scours his memory banks, searching for any hint of what could’ve happened to him, if something like this has happened before. He goes back to the very beginning, to his first moments of existence, and finds something. A scrap of memory from when his body was activated.

Suddenly, _light, warmth, sound_. The first things he ever felt. But before that… a black, blank void. An utterly encompassing nothingness. Just like this one.

He realizes, with a horrible, dizzying, sinking feeling, that there’s only one explanation for this.

He’s partially modular. That includes his brain.

He’s been disconnected from his body.

Chuck starts to panic, goes to take a deep breath… and he _can’t._ No lungs. No way to fight off the panic. There’s no data coming in and no way to send a message out. He has _nothing_. His brain could be buried at the bottom of a chasm, or hidden away in an abandoned building, or he could be moments away from being wiped from existence so someone else can use the AI module that stores his consciousness, his memories, everything that makes him a _person._ Or… what if whoever did this took his body and they just… _leave_ him like this? In this featureless void, cut off from everything and everyone he knows, _forever?_

Creeping existential horror overtakes him. Chuck loses track of time for a while, thoughts choppy and spiraling. Who would do this? What happened to his body? Where is he? There’s no way the Burners can come save him if he can’t even tell them he’s in trouble—

What if he never sees the Burners again? What if he never sees _Mike_ again? The last thing he did was screw everything up! Their last interaction involuntarily starts replaying itself in his head.

Chuck scrambles to pull up better memories of Mike. Here’s one, a month old—

(They’d just gotten back to HQ after fighting a bunch of gruntbots, Mike’s forehead had gotten cut by a flying piece of shrapnel. He’s laughing and joking as Chuck helps him clean the blood off his face. Mike squeezes his eyes shut as Chuck drags the damp cloth over his brow, his mouth quirked in its perpetual slight grin.

Chuck lets himself imagine Mike’s lips pressed against his, the rag stalling over Mike’s still-closed eyes.

“You good, Chuckles?” Mike asks.

“Uh, yeah, I, uh—” Mike is just standing there, eyes still closed, like he trusts Chuck completely. Chuck pulls back, turns away, tongue-tied.)

Oh god, that one’s embarrassing. Chuck finds another, from a few weeks after he’d come to Motorcity, dives headfirst into the memory—

(Chuck feels... odd. Bad odd. He doesn’t have a name for the feeling yet. He also doesn’t know how to fix it.

He wanders around the hideout, trying to find something that’ll cheer him up, but nothing sounds enjoyable. Dutch invites him to work on a project they’d started the other day, but Chuck shrugs him off. He doesn’t _understand_ , he’d been _fine_ yesterday. Now he just wants to shut down until this feeling goes away.

He ends up on the roof, somehow. Lies there, splayed out.

The door creaks. Chuck cracks his eyes open, sees a familiar pair of dark eyes peering down at him.

“I brought pizza, if you want some,” Mike says, uncertain. “I’ll eat it if you don't want any, though.”

“Thanks Mikey, I’m good.” Chuck closes his eyes again.

“Hey, Chuckles, did I ever tell you about the time Roth totally body-slammed one of Kane’s bots?”

Chuck almost tells Mike that he just wants to be alone, but… he actually _hasn’t_ heard this story.

Chuck’s startled into laughing when Mike gets to describing the shocked look on Dutch’s face when his newly-made “artist-AI” full-on _tackled_ a gruntbot. Mike pauses, watching him with a small smile.

It’s... nice.)

Chuck wishes Mike was here now, to distract him from his impending doom. Fuck, no. No more panic. He finds another memory, from right after he installed his slingshot—

(A laser hits Mutt’s rear tire. She skids out of control, Mike shouts something—

Chuck comes to nearly a minute later, according to his internal clock. He’s upside-down, hair dangling towards Mutt’s roof. Thank goodness for seven-point seatbelts. He looks towards the driver’s seat, glancing at Mike—

Mike’s _not there_. Chuck releases himself, drops, climbs his way out of Mutt’s open window—

Mike’s jacket is torn, his left arm limp at his side. He’s one-handing his spark staff and _still_ managing to carve through a few of the bots circling him. Chuck sprints forward, slingshot out, snipes a bot coming for Mike’s exposed back.

Mike turns _away_ from the fight toward him, relief evident on his face. They take out the last few bots together, covering each other. Chuck doesn’t have to use any hand-to-hand combat protocols, thankfully, but it takes all his concentration to aim and fire, aim and fire. They’re both panting with effort when the last bot finally falls.

Mike takes a moment to pull him into an awkward one-armed hug, resting his forehead on Chuck’s shoulder.

“‘M glad you’re okay.”)

Mike had broken his arm, it drove him _nuts_ not being allowed to get behind the wheel until Julie could bring some nanites down from Deluxe. But he hadn’t seemed to care about it at the time, he had just _fought._ Protecting Chuck. Until Chuck could protect _him._

Chuck finds another memory, a few weeks old—

(Mike is asleep, his head pillowed on an arm draped over the armrest of the couch. His cheek is squished, his mouth slightly open as he breathes slow and steady. Julie turns off the television quietly, whispering a “goodnight” to the two of them as she heads off, on her way back to Deluxe.

Chuck _could_ wake Mike up and walk him to bed, but he could also grab a blanket and drape it over Mike’s sleeping form. Mike’s fallen asleep on the couch before, it’s not an uncommon occurrence.

Maybe Chuck could also grab another blanket and curl up on the other end of the couch, close enough to feel where the cushions dip under Mike’s weight.

Chuck goes into maintenance mode next to his sleeping best friend, lulled by the sound of Mike’s quiet snores.)

The panic is subsiding. Chuck finds another memory, an older one this time, their first skirmish as a team—

(Mike is smiling like the sun, blinding and brilliant.

“That was _awesome!”_ Mike laughs, turning the full force of his grin on an unprepared Chuck. “A copilot was a _fantastic_ idea! Did you _see_ how many bots we took out?” He yanks the wheel to the side, barely managing to avoid drifting off the road they’re cruising down at 300 mph.

Chuck hopes he gets used to this sort of thing. At the moment he’s too busy screaming “Eyes on the road, Mikey!” to actually respond to Mike’s enthusiasm.

Mike laughs, and actually slows down a little.

“That was awesome,” Mike says again. “You’re incredible.” And Chuck feels a terrifyingly intense emotion he hasn’t felt before. Panic, but softer. Joy, but more frantic. Happiness, but with a _smidge_ of terror.

He can’t identify it. But he flags it. It feels… _important._ )

Chuck holds on to the memory of that unidentified feeling. The all-encompassing existential horror has faded. He’s going to get out of this. He’s going to see Mike again.

Filled with newfound determination, he pulls up his most recent memories. Maybe there’s a hint as to who he’s dealing with hidden somewhere in the past few weeks. He starts searching through his recent interactions with the other gangs—

He’s slammed back into the world all at once, every function coming online with vicious suddenness and crackles of static around the edges. He can _see,_ but his vision is _different,_ less peripheral vision and more options: night vision, heat vision, motion tracking, Chuck flicks through them frantically, trying to see something other than the red light that’s blinding him. His eyes slowly adjust with a whirr. His proprioception seems messed up, he’s too _big,_ too _wide,_ he flails an arm out and hears a clank, feels pressure and cold as it hits something. He’s sitting up, his arm hit the wall. He hesitantly moves the arm again, brings it into his line of sight.

It’s not _his_ arm. It’s not even bioware. It’s solid metal, with a thin sheen of synthetic polymer sensors on the surface. Two fingers and a thumb, a brutal, massive hand, not made to do _anything_ Chuck was made for. He looks down. His legs are stretched out in front of him, powerful pistons and clawed feet, attached to a chassis that’s armored like a tank.

Chuck tries really hard not to panic again.

He completely fails. 

He screams and nothing happens; he’s got no vocal cords, no output speaker. He doesn’t even have a _mouth._ He slams his hands into the wall and pushes himself unsteadily to his feet. He immediately trips, crashing to the floor with an echoing metallic clang.

“Whoa, he’s up!” He hears Junior’s nasal voice. “You sure he can’t get out of there?” Chuck heaves himself back to his feet and throws himself heedlessly in the direction of the voice, right into a laser forcefield that flings him back with a blinding flash and an electric buzz.

“Easy, baby!” Junior yells. “Save it for the ring!”

The _ring?_ What _ring_ _?_ What the hell is going on? The _Mama’s Boys_ did this? Chuck did _not_ see that coming.

He picks himself up, shuffles forward, and methodically beats against the forcefield, reveling in the feeling of _feeling something_ , while also trying to find a weak point. No luck. It’s solid enough that he knows he can’t break out. He turns to the walls instead, kicks one hard enough for the concrete to chip.

 _"Hey!_ Stop breaking our stuff! You gotta listen to us first, ya dig?” says another one of the Mama’s Boys. Four of them are in here, looking at him nervously.

Chuck turns his new head towards them, trying to convey just _how little_ he wants to do that without being able to move his face to make an expression. Then he uses one of his oversized fingers to scrape a giant F into the wall.

“Hey! I said _stop!”_ Junior says over the sound of metal on concrete. “What’re you even doing?”

Chuck ignores Junior and starts working on a U.

“Oh, you’re writin’ letters! One sec, she prepared me a thing—”

A keypad appears in the center of the forcefield enclosure. One with large keys, designed for big, clumsy fingers. Chuck rushes to it, searches it for any link to the intranet, but there’s nothing. Of course not. He hits a few hasty keystrokes.

<lert me gop>

He’s so angry and terrified he can barely type. The whole _finger_ situation doesn’t help.

“No can do, I already _told_ ya. You gotta listen to our plan first. You should have some patience.”

That last sentence sounds prim, like Junior’s quoting someone. Chuck didn’t think he’d ever be lectured by a _Mama’s Boy_.

<dont cvare abt yr plan>, he types.

“Well, that’s too bad, because there’s no way you’re gettin’ out of here without hearin’ us out first.”

Chuck turns back to the wall and carves a C, staring at Junior pointedly. Then he hears a new voice. 

“Hello, dear. I apologize for the wait, someone just attempted to bet with fake—young man, you’d _better_ not be writing what I think you’re writing.”

Chuck pauses.

An icon has appeared next to the keyboard. It’s a cube, like the Burners’, but it has no features. It’s just blank, white. The voice, though clearly female, is also strangely anonymous, as featureless as the cube. It must be run through a filtering program.

Chuck defiantly scrapes a K into the wall. Then a U. Then he crosses his arms.

“ _Well_ ,” the icon says. “I guess considering the situation I can’t expect the highest levels of civility. I do wish we could have met under better circumstances. You already know my boys, I take it.” She pauses.

“You can call me Mama.” 


	7. Self-defense

<whaat teh fucfk>, Chuck types.

“Watch your mouth, son,” Mama says absently. It sounds like something she says a lot. “This is a temporary situation, as long as you do something for me.”

<whatr if i dont>

“It’s your choice,” says Mama. “But I think you’d prefer to have your old body back, correct? Don’t worry. We’re keeping it safe for you. But that care is going to come at a cost.”

Chuck keysmashes a little. Then he types, <tellk me what u wanht me to do>

“Very good,” Mama says. Chuck keeps typing, laboriously.

<then i cabn tell u whethr or not to gol fuck urself>

“Hm. You _are_ feisty. That’ll serve you well. Here’s the deal. You know the Duke of Detroit.”

Chuck keysmashes again.

“Yes, I know the feeling,” Mama says wryly. “The Duke has come into possession of a large quantity of liquid helium. He’s always scrounging things out of junkyards and old doomsday bunkers. For reasons I won’t even speculate on, but which probably have to do with his enormous ego, he won’t sell it or trade for it; he insists on hosting a televised bot-fighting tournament in our arena and awarding the helium to the winner. It’s useful stuff. And rare. All the gangs are competing for it.” Mama pauses.

“I need that helium,” she says.

<why>, Chuck types.

“That’s not your concern. All you need to know is that I need it. And you’re going to get it for me.”

<?>

“I’m going to win that tournament, because I have an advantage. That advantage is you.”

<??>

“You’re going to fight for the Mama’s Boys in the tournament. And you’re going to win.”

Chuck doesn’t know much about Motorcity regulations concerning bots, but he’s _pretty_ sure you can’t pit sentient ones against each other in cage matches.

<illegalk>, he types. <im a sentient beinhg>

“Yes,” Mama says. “And you’ll be the only one in the ring. You like breaking the rules, don’t you?”

Chuck stiffens as a recording of his own voice starts playing, tinny with distance.

“I’m _breaking_ the _rules,”_ he’s saying. “It’s _great.”_ Chuck clenches his fists, unclenches them to type <u spied oin me?>

“There are no secrets in Motorcity, not from me,” Mama says. “There’s not many AIs of your caliber around. Even fewer that have the set of fighting skills I need. And then there was the matter of acquiring one. You happened to be alone. I saw a chance and I took it.”

<u sent that malwasre>

“Yes.”

<BIPTCH>, Chuck types.

“Save it,” Mama says dryly. “Do me this one little favor, and we’ll put you back in your regular body and let you go like nothing ever happened. It’ll be easy for you. You have everything the other bots don’t. Autonomy. Creativity. _Motivation.”_

<miotivatn to kicfk your ass>

“Honestly, this isn’t hard. You’d think a bot as smart as you could understand _cooperation.”_ The icon moves like it’s shaking its head. “I don’t think you realize what I’m willing to do to get this helium, dear.”

A screen pops up in front of Chuck.

The last Mama’s Boy is on the screen, pointing a wicked-looking laser rifle toward the bottom left corner, at a pile of cloth and limbs—

That’s his _body_. Tossed like a ragdoll against a wall somewhere nearby. Chuck wants to _scream_ , but he settles for typing.

<yiou woukldnt>

Mama doesn’t reply. The ginger kid on the screen cocks his head as if listening to something, then aims the rifle at Chuck’s body’s head.

Chuck freezes. They’d really do it, they’d _trap_ him in this _scrapheap._

“Come now, dear, we both know you don’t want me to have to do this.” She sounds almost _pleading._

<DONT>

“Fight for me _,”_ Mama says. “And we’ll set this right.”

Chuck takes a moment, clenching and unclenching his fists to center himself. He carefully reaches out to the keyboard, pokes out a short message.

<ok>

“Wonderful. We’ll put you back where you belong after you win the tournament.”

The forcefield flickers out of existence.

“You know my boys. Junior, Chad, Skillit, and BC.” Junior stuffs his hands in his pockets. Skillit doesn’t meet Chuck’s eyes. “They’ll be looking after you, fixing you up between rounds. The one… _keeping an eye_ on your body is Ginger. Go on, now, boys, the tournament’s about to start.” The cube disappears.

“Chad, BC, take him to the fightin’ room,” Junior orders. “Skillit, you’re gonna watch him from behind. Make sure he doesn’t _do_ nothin.’ I’m gonna go be announcer.”

“You _always_ get to be announcer,” the one with glasses, Skillit, whines.

“Yeah, cuz I’m the _best_ at it!” Junior scoffs, turning. “Come on guys, we need to focus.”

The Mama’s Boys are surprisingly solemn as they lead Chuck to the… “fightin’ room.” Chuck has a few moments to himself during the trek through the back hallways, recording their path all the while. The sensorium in this body is extremely limited. He’s got proprioception, sight, hearing, pressure/temperature sensors, and that’s _it._ No smell, no taste (no _mouth,_ no _tongue_ ), hardly any touch. It’s probably a _good_ thing he doesn’t have any pain receptors, considering what they want him to do. But it’s _awful._ The best thing about it is, it’s not full of synthetic hormones triggering overwhelming cascades of feelings. This body muffles more than his senses; it dulls his emotions. His fear is strangely distant and muted.

Or he’s totally dissociating. Either way, Chuck’s kind of grateful. He lets his mind wander as they wait for the first fight in a holding room off the main arena. He absently practices bouncing back and forth on his feet, getting familiar with the weight of this body. He wonders how long it took Roth to get used to his arms, when he first got them. Roth’s not generally a fighter, but his hatred of Kanebots is _legendary_ and when he gets mad he can really do some damage. Heh, if Roth was here he’d totally destroy these other bots.

What would Roth have chosen as his fighting name? It’d probably be something completely out there, like Ripstrength or Dragon’s Hide. He’s really creative. Just like Dutch.

Chuck really hopes he gets to see them again.

Junior’s voice interrupts his thoughts, booming out over a loudspeaker into the arena.

“Alright, Motorcitizens! You’ve built your bots! Now it’s time to pit them against each other in the ULTIMATE BOT FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP! Winners take all, losers get nothin’!” Then Junior pauses. There’s a mumbled argument in the background. “Shut _up,_ I’m _gonna!”_ Junior hisses, half into the mic. Then he clears his throat.

“And now a word from our sponsor,” he says peevishly. “The… _ugh…_ Duke of Detroit.”

The Duke doesn’t let Junior’s lack of enthusiasm ruin his entrance.

 _“Hello-o-o-o_ Motorcity!” the Duke sings over the deafening roar of what has to be a few _tons_ of fireworks. Screens appear in the center of the arena, the display projected in high definition for the “benefit” of the crowd.

“Welcome to _my_ Ultimate Bot Fighting Championship!” the Duke drawls, “Where the tension is high and the prize floats higher!” He guffaws into the mic. “Oh, I do crack myself up. _Wha-pow!”_ He points to the side, and an image appears of a massive, heavily frosted metal cylinder.

“Now this baby may not _look_ like much,” the Duke says, turning back to the camera. “But what you see _here!”_ —He gestures with his cane, he’s _really_ milking this—“is nearly _three HUNDRED_ cubic meters of _liquid helium!”_

Someone in the crowd whistles.

“Now some of you… _‘less educated’_ folks might be thinking. What’s the _big deal?_ Well, I’ll _TELL YOU!”_ He pauses, takes a drink of water handed to him by an offscreen lackey.

“Superconductors. Superconducting _magnets_. Need I say more? I _will_. You wanna peek inside something without peeling it apart? Make an MRI. Wanna manufacture fiber optic cables? This stuff will help you make them _fla-a-a-a-w-less_. Supercool a few dozen atoms and make that quantum computer you’ve always wanted! And for you car enthusiasts out there, this stuff is kept at a _chilly_ four degrees Kelvin. Imagine building a _helium-cooled engine.”_ He shrugs, cocks his hip. “Dunno if that’s possible, but if! _It! IS!_ ” His cane punctuates each word with a stab straight at the camera. “HOLY-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y SMOKES!”

“Now that everyone _appreciates_ what I am so _generously_ donating to this competition, you’d better try your best! Now, let the ga-a-a-a-mes.....” He pauses for effect, arms raised.

Two massive confetti cannons appear on either side of the Duke.

 _“BEGIN!!”_ The confetti nearly catches fire when the second round of fireworks goes off. It takes nearly a full minute for it to die down. Junior wrests the mic back.

“Yeesh, finally,” he mutters. “Okay, y’all ready for some BOT FIGHTS?”

The crowd roars.

“First up! We have a mismatch here, folks, hope you bet on the right bot! In one corner, representing the East Side Hotrodders, we have the hulking Humungo, runner-up of last month’s heavyweight contest! And in the other corner—representing _yours truly_ —our newest, baddest, and best creation, who’s gonna tear everybody a new one—”

The screech of the arena gate opening sounds distorted and dull through the scrounged-together hardware Chuck has been shoved into. He lumbers forward, wide shoulders scraping against the walls.

“—Riiiiiiiiisky Busineeeeeeeeess!”

 _That’s_ what they’re calling him? Risky Business? That’s appropriate, he thinks angrily. When he gets out of here, they’re going to find out how _risky_ kidnapping him really was.

Mama helpfully loaded dossiers on all his potential opponents into his hardware; the body came prepped with knowledge about the bots it might have to fight. His first opponent, Humungo, is twice his height, a hulking mass of clipped wires and welded plates. Three glowing red eyes trail from the center of the thing’s forehead down towards its neck, a sputtering engine peeks out from over its right shoulder—it looks like it was made from a few trashed hounds and half a car. Poor car. Chuck’s current body is obviously weaker than his opponent’s. The chassis is smaller, the metal plates are thinner. To everyone in the crowd, it’s an obvious victory for the other bot.

But Chuck’s brain has this weird thing called “a sense of self-preservation.” And “bigger” doesn’t mean “better fighter.” Humungo is a hulk, and its engine-powered right hook has apparently launched more than a few smaller bots into the audience, but Chuck’s chassis is more _dextrous,_ and he’s used to working with a comparatively thin, light frame. He opens the fighting modules that are most effective against larger opponents, quickly runs through a few different options in the time it takes Humungo to cock its absolutely _massive_ fist back.

Despite the size disparity, Chuck feels slightly guilty about taking on a non-sentient bot. It’s definitely an unfair advantage to have. The human brain contains about 62 terabytes of information, give or take. Sixty terabytes is the tipping point for self-awareness in most bots. Fighting bots don’t need nearly that much memory, especially if they’re designed to do fairly simple things. He supposes sexbots don’t need that much memory, either, but his owner was nothing if not pretentious, and besides, Chuck added some memory modules himself once he started getting positive reinforcement for self-improving. They just hadn’t expected him to self-improve his way to _self-awareness_.

There’s no way Humungo is even _close_ to that. According to Mama’s dossier, its OS is built up from one of the Hounds that form its body. All aggression, coordination, and motion tracking. As much as it could be said to _expect_ anything, it’s probably not expecting him to fight _smart_.

Humungo’s back-engine revs, a burst of smoke the only warning before the full mass of its fist screams towards Chuck’s face. Chuck dodges, partially deflecting the attack with a shove from his three-pronged hand, steps and plants his foot behind Humungo’s leading foot, locks his leg, hooks his arm around its torso, and _twists_ , tipping Humungo over his leg and onto its back.

The muffled thud of a solid ton of metal hitting the ground is the nicest sound Chuck’s heard since he came to in this body. Junior’s voice shouts excitedly through the speakers stationed around the arena, echoing off the stands.

“I told you, baby! Our bot is the _baddest!”_

Humungo starts to get up. Chuck shoves it back down with a kick to the chest and reaches for its throat, grabbing a fistful of wires and cables.

It’s not conscious. It’s not _alive,_ Chuck tells himself, as he _pulls_.

He still can’t help but feel sick as cables and tubes rip from Humungo’s “neck,” spewing oil and other, unidentifiable fluids in a grotesque parody of biology. Chuck keeps pulling until he hits something essential; sparks fly from Humungo’s mangled neck and its eyes finally flicker off. It’s fixable, Chuck reminds himself. It’ll be fine. Non-sentient bots don’t get traumatized from a little temporary death.

The crowd roars its approval as Chuck pilots the body back through the gate he came out of a scant few minutes ago. The screech of metal on metal as the gate closes blots out the beginning of Junior’s commentary.

“—was _sweet!!_ Oh man, what a _slaughter_. Alright, uh, next up we have a new bot with a few brutal victories under its belt, the Green Machine! The Terras’ first entry in our tournament! And in the other corner, from the beautiful babes of the North Side, the mistresses of superspeed, the Amazons... the infamous, the undefeated, _Blendooooo!”_

Chuck _really_ hopes he doesn’t have to fight Blendo. That thing is basically just a spinning sawblade, and he likes having ankles.

But, he thinks, it _is_ only a sawblade. It doesn’t have arms to grapple and grab, or a mouth to bite with. If he can time it right and jam its mechanisms with a foot, he can probably put it out of commission. If the ankle has to go, it has to go.

Chuck is somewhat glad for his shitty audio system as he watches the match in resignation. The screech of metal blades tearing through Blendo’s opponent would be _much_ more unpleasant with his normal range of hearing.

“And Blendo wins again! Next up—from the Cablers—the bot of breaking, the tech that tears, the one, the only, Wrecking Baaallllll! And in the other corner, from the Michigan Fleet, the plundering creature of the night, Vampirate!”

***

After the first round ends and the last few pieces of shrapnel from the losing bots have been cleared, the Duke steals the mic again for a... “halftime show.” Chuck tries to block it out, but the Duke’s loud voice and risque dancing are _incredibly_ obnoxious, and the stadium-shaking bass line is even harder to ignore.

Chuck wishes he could adjust this body’s senses. He has to tune it out manually instead, trying his best to focus on cataloging the bots that survived until the second round. He’s going to have to fight at least a few of them.

The Duke’s endless karaoke session is cut _blessedly_ short when someone backstage shuts off his mic. He compensates by setting off several more confetti cannons before slouching ungracefully back to the announcers’ booth.

“Alright, everyone shut it! Round two’s starting! Bets are locked!” Junior yells over the (somewhat relieved) cheering of the crowd. “Our first tier-two battle is between our very own Risky Business, the wrecker that _tore_ out that other bot’s _throat,_ did y’all see—”

Chuck winces at the reminder as he walks forward through the now-opened gate.

“—yeah, oh man. And the other bot is numero two of the matchup I think we _all_ wanted to watch go down, the _other_ bloodthirstiest— _yeah, that’s a word, shut up_ —the OTHER bloodthirstiest bot: BLENDOOOO!”

Welp. It was nice being able to walk while it lasted. At least this body doesn’t have pain sensors.

Blendo is a rounded disk about three feet in diameter, black steel with sharp silver teeth staggered around its edge. It also has a _tasteful_ splash of gory red paint splattered across the top of its dome. It’s like a roomba, if a roomba was made of circular saws.

The only strategy that Chuck can see working is the one he already came up with. He’s just going to have to kick it. And let it chew on his leg. Ugh.

Blendo is a _fast_ little shit. It nearly takes out his right foot before Chuck can think to dodge. Blendo keeps going, rocketing to the far wall, ricocheting off it and shooting debris into the stands. The people seem to love it, at least. And Blendo moves in more-or-less straight lines. Chuck pretends to stumble.

The bot takes the bait. Chuck waits until it’s a second from impact, swings his leg back, and _slams_ it forward, straight into the moving parts in the middle of the bot’s chassis. There’s a horrific whine and a climbing high-pitched scream before something in the bot’s chassis _pops_ and starts leaking smoke. Blendo beeps, its blades no longer rotating at mach death. Chuck can’t help but imagine that the beep sounds frustrated. Chuck yanks his mangled foot out of the other bot’s chassis, leaving some significant chunks behind.

Chuck reaches down and flips Blendo onto its back. The beeps sound _very_ petulant now.

“You don't WIN unless you SHUT IT DOWN, Risky! Come _on!”_ Junior shouts over the cheering crowd. Chuck pauses, furious, before tearing off the bot’s bottom panel. There. He reaches in carefully, snapping a red wire, and Blendo goes dark.

 _That_ should be easy to fix, at least, Chuck hopes.

“...Well, that wasn’t as _bloodthirsty_ as I thought it was gonna be, but it sure was an utter _domination!_ Risky Business comes out on top against the old champion Blendo! Any of y’all that lost money on this, you _don’t_ get it back, don’t even try. Next up—”

There should only be one or two more fights, Chuck tells himself, just one or two more, and he can get his body back.

That is, if Mama doesn’t go back on her word. Keeping a champion fighting bot around is probably something she’d consider doing. She _does_ run the betting pool.

...Chuck needs to rescue his body and get out of here.

Once he gets back to the holding room, he takes inventory. This body’s right leg isn’t going to hold up well if he makes a run for it. He sits down to try and patch it, but he can’t do much. The tools he normally has access to are built into his other body’s arm. It’s a mess—the metal around the joint is a jagged wreck, probably not structurally sound, and it’s _definitely_ not going to last long if he has to fight on it. But he could likely make it back to his body if he doesn’t put too much weight on it. Skillit is guarding the large garage door at the back of the room, looking bored. Chuck could probably get the drop on him. But he’d raise the alarm, and then Chuck’s body would be toast. He needs some kind of distraction.

BC and Chad appear from a connecting tunnel. BC has a welding torch. Chad has an enormous bundle of scrap metal in his arms.

“Don’t worry, dude, we’re your pit crew,” BC says. “Nice job out there! You need some help with that?”

Chuck _really_ wishes he had more fingers. Flipping someone off when you only have two just doesn’t have the same gravitas. They ignore his gesture, anyway. BC fires up the torch.

Chuck’s mind wanders again as the fight drags and Chad and BC work on his leg. Who names their bot _Vampirate?_ That bot wasn’t even vampire _or_ pirate-themed. It was just a giant sphere with eight limbs. It should have been named, like, Octopulverizer, or something. That’s pretty good, actually. Dutch would approve.

Suddenly Chuck hears a faint sound rising over the crashes and clangs of the current fight. It sounds like... an engine? Wait. Is that _gunfire?_

Chad and BC stop working on his leg. They cock their heads in that way that means Mama is speaking in their ears. They suddenly drop everything, abandoning the welding torch and scrap metal on the floor, and rush off into the connecting tunnels. Skillit stares after them, glances fearfully at Chuck, then rushes off as well. Chuck barely notices, straining the body’s ears to try and figure out _why_ the sounds feel so familiar.

The whole arena _shudders_. A few people scream. The crowd is shifting, restless.

Mama’s voice comes over the loudspeakers, cutting off the crowd’s rising panic.

“No need for alarm. This incursion will be dealt with shortly. If you leave you will not be able to re-enter or collect on your bets. No refunds.”

An incursion. The _Burners_. Those are _Stronghorn’s_ guns. That’s _Mutt’s_ engine. Something unnameable wells up in Chuck, choking him. He wants his tear ducts back.

They _came_ for him.

For a long moment, he’s frozen, listening to the achingly familiar sound of Mutt’s engine. Then he shakes himself. It’s now or never.

Chuck miscalculates trying to open the garage door and tears the handle off, so he just crashes through it, reducing it to scrap metal, and limps down the hallway. There are a surprising number of criss-crossing tunnels hidden behind the walls of the bot arena. Dozens of color-coded wires trace along the ceiling, disappearing into holes and wrapping around pipes. The whole place seems very well-connected. Chuck pulls up the record of the path they took to get to the main ring, retracing his steps. His body _should_ be near where he woke up, they wouldn’t have wanted to carry his brain very far. He _hopes_ they didn’t, at least. That’d be irresponsible.

And existentially horrifying. He’s had enough of that for one day.

He recognizes a doorway up ahead, rushes through it. This is the room where they had him in that forcefield chamber. He sees the giant “FUCK U” carved into the wall. Chuck looks around frantically.

He rips the handle off the first of a series of deadbolted doors along the back wall. Shit. That was _way_ louder than he thought it would be. He sticks his head into the room. It’s just a haphazard pile of tools and extra spools of wire; a storage room. Chuck backs out, rips open the second door.

There are bot parts in here all right, but they’re not his. A familiar half-melted face stares back at him from atop a pile of right arms. Chuck guesses the Duke finally gave in to Cyborg Dan’s whining and replaced his slagged head.

Chuck nearly tears the final door off of its hinges, freezes at the shock of blonde hair just barely visible behind the boxes stacked in front of him. He punches the wall, enlarging the door enough to fit himself through. He shoves past the boxes, heedless of their contents. There it… _he_ is. His head is lolling forward, his arms are slack by his sides. One leg is folded, the other is splayed out straight. He’s propped against the wall.

Ginger is standing next to his body, holding the laser rifle pointed at it shakily.

“Whoa, man!” Ginger says, nervous. “Don’t come any closer! I’ll blow it away! You gotta stay and fight!”

Chuck shakes his head. Ginger brandishes the rifle.

“Look man, I don’t wanna do it! But I will!”

Chuck pulls up his body language directories, looks at Ginger’s shaking hands, the way his eyes shift sideways.

He’s bluffing. He _really_ doesn’t want to do it.

Chuck takes advantage of Ginger’s hesitation. He rushes forward and grabs Ginger in both hands, pinning his arms to his sides before he can make a decision. Ginger drops the rifle.

“Whoa!” Ginger struggles as Chuck lifts him bodily. There’s a large bin with a lid in the corner of the room, half-full of robot parts. Chuck stuffs Ginger into the bin, closes the lid, and sets a few boxes on top of it. There’s some muffled yelling and banging from inside, but then it subsides. Good. Ginger can think about his life choices for awhile.

Chuck freezes as he hears hurried footsteps in the hallway. The Mama’s Boy’s probably sent someone else after him. Who _knows_ what kind of tech they have to incapacitate him again. Chuck effortlessly scoops up his own lifeless body, cradling it protectively as the footsteps halt in the doorway. He tenses, ready to face whoever’s there. He turns.

He wasn’t ready.

It’s _Mike._

 _“Chuck!”_ Mike’s voice cracks, eyes widening as they trace over the limp form of Chuck’s body, held in enormous metal arms. “Get away from him!”

 _Mike. God,_ it’s good to see him, even if he’s holding his spark staff and looks like he wants to take Chuck’s head off with it.

“What did you do to him?” Mike snarls. Chuck shakes his head frantically, hunching himself around the body. Mike glares at him, takes a step forward.

Chuck makes his metal body flinch, trying to communicate just how much _not-a-threat_ he is. Mike pauses, lowering his weapon slightly, and takes another step forward. Chuck hunches more, using both arms to shield his vacant body. Finally, it seems to click.

“Are you... protecting him?”

Chuck nods vigorously. Mike’s eyes widen.

“I’m a friend of his,” he says. “You’re one of their fighting bots. Don’t tell me… you’re sentient?”

Chuck nods some more.

 _“Jesus,”_ Mike says. “Those _bastards._ What have they done to Chuck?”

Okay, Mike needs to ask some more yes-or-no questions. Chuck frees one hand, points at the body, then at himself. Back and forth a few times. Mike frowns.

“You... knew him?” Mike asks. Okay, close enough, they’ll have time to clarify later. Chuck nods again, pats the body in a way he hopes reads as affectionate.

“You were friends with him, too,” Mike says, lowering his staff completely. Chuck gives his best approximation of a thumbs up.

“Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

Chuck nods.

“Can we fix it?”

Chuck nods more, points to the body, and then points to the door.

“Okay,” Mike says decisively. “Let’s get him out of here.”

***

Mike pulls up his comms as they run.

“Guys, I found him, I found Chuck!” Chuck can hear the relief in Mike’s voice. “He’s powered down or knocked out or something, though, I don’t know. Oh, and he’s been making friends in here, so don’t be surprised if I’m with a, um. A _big guy_. We need a distraction. Can you cause a scene?”

“Like, _more_ of a scene?” Dutch asks, incredulous.

“Oh _heck_ yeah, _Texaaaaaas!!”_ Texas shouts, before the gunfire reaches a _crescendo_. Whatever’s going on out there, it’s definitely a _scene.  
_

Mike puts out a hand, stopping Chuck, and consults a schematic.

“We came in through the sewers,” he says, “we can go back out that way too. We can have the others meet us somewhere outside.” He pulls up Julie’s icon. “Jules, we’ve gotta go on foot, my new friend is too big to fit in Mutt. I put her on autopilot, you mind letting her follow you?”

“You got it, cowboy,” Julie says. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah, we’re on our way out now. I’ll call you with a rendezvous location when we get clear. Keep the Mama’s Boys distracted.”

“No problem,” Julie says, laughing a little. Chuck hears something explode before Mike closes the comms.

“Follow me,” he says to Chuck. Chuck does, gladly.

***

Mike leads him through some nasty-looking sewer tunnels, a handkerchief over his face, and Chuck is glad for the moment that this body has no sense of smell. They emerge from a culvert just outside the arena. Chuck can still hear explosions coming from inside. The Burners are _really_ wrecking the place.

“We gotta get out of range of their sensors,” Mike says. “Can you run?”

Chuck nods, and then lowers himself to one knee, cradles his body with one arm, and pats himself on the back with his free hand. Mike gets it. He snaps his spark staff away, clambers up Chuck’s knee, then his torso, and perches astride his shoulders. Chuck readjusts his grip on his body, stands up, makes sure Mike is situated, and takes off running as best he can on his damaged ankle.

He’s definitely imagined Mike riding him before, but this wasn’t how he pictured it going down. Be careful what you wish for, he supposes. Mike feels feather-light on his shoulders. Chuck puts his head down and sprints.

The right ankle lasts about six miles before suddenly buckling under the repeated stress. Chuck manages to land on his knees instead of his face—without throwing Mike off or dropping his poor body—but he’s not going to be able to run anymore any time soon.

“Ooof! You okay, dude?” Mike says. He leaps down off Chuck’s shoulders with his usual frustrating athleticism. Chuck stretches out his foot. It’s bent at a weird angle, the half-welded plates BC installed hanging off it haphazardly.

 _“Yikes,”_ Mike says. “That looks _bad._ You got damaged in a fight? Does it hurt?”

Chuck shakes his head. Mike furrows his brow, a mixture of pained and relieved. “Okay, good, I guess,” he says. He pats Chuck on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we can get you a ride from here. I’ll call Julie, I’m sure we have a trailer that’ll fit you. We can fix you up back at HQ.”

A quick conversation with Julie later, they’re scheduled for pick-up in about half an hour, as soon as Julie can get the trailer hitched up and get back out to their location.

“We might as well relax. You can put him down for the moment,” Mike says.

Chuck picks a soft-looking bit of ground by the side of the road, free of rocks, and carefully puts his body down.

He and Mike both stare at his body.

Chuck’s never thought of himself as _small_. Compared to most humans, he’s tall; when he’s inhabiting his body, with all his clashing movement directories and self-consciousness, he’s gangly and awkward. But right now, laid gently on the ground, his body looks almost _delicate_. Chuck wants to protect it. It’s a weird feeling to have about himself.

Mike puts a hand on Chuck’s back. Chuck only feels it as light pressure. He aches, missing the cacophony of sensations that a touch from Mike usually brings.

“I don’t know what the hell they thought they were doing,” Mike says. “Kidnapping a Burner? _Why?_ I don’t _get_ it. I’m glad he found _you_ in there.” Mike pats Chuck’s back.

“No wonder you guys got to be friends. He loves talking to other sentient AIs. He always got along so well with Roth, right from the start.” Mike laughs a little. “He can be kinda awkward around humans, though. It’s cute. He’s… he’s pretty great. Thanks for helping me get him out. You care about him a lot too, huh?”

Chuck nods, somewhat hesitantly. Did Mike just call him _cute?_

“Don’t worry. We’ll fix him,” Mike says, resolute. “We’ve _got_ to. I never _told_ him.”

What?

“God, I’m so _stupid_ ,” Mike says angrily, running his hands through his hair in distress. “I should’ve… What if we _can’t_ fix him and it’s _too late?_ The last thing we did was get in a stupid fight because I’m an idiot! I should’ve just _told_ him how I felt a long time ago.”

Again, _what?_

Mike walks forward a few steps and kneels by Chuck’s vacant body. Chuck stares, dumbstruck, as Mike gently reaches down and brushes his body’s bangs out of its face.

“He’s so awesome,” Mike says sadly. “He’s sweet, and funny, and smart. He’s so brave, even though he doesn’t think he is. He’s amazing. And… I know he was _designed_ to be hot, he doesn’t do it on _purpose,_ and he probably doesn’t want anyone to look at him like that anymore, but _god._ It was so hard not to do anything about it, when he’d, like, flirt with me on accident. I never _said_ anything, though. I didn’t want him to think I’d ever ask him to do something he’s not really into.”

What the _actual_ fuck.

“But I shouldn’t have been a _coward,_ I should have _said_ something,” Mike continues. “I… I don’t care if he doesn’t feel the same way. He deserves to know that I… I _love_ him.”

Chuck stands there, big, useless hands clenched into fists, utterly frozen. Mike looks back over his shoulder at Chuck, eyes wet, mouth set in a hard, determined line.

“So. We’re gonna fix this, and I’m gonna tell him, and I don’t even care what happens after that, I just want him _back.”_

Never in his entire existence has Chuck wanted to scream as badly as he does right now. He wants to scream, and punch a wall, and hurl himself off a cliff. He wants to smash an _entire_ car, preferably one of the Duke’s limos.

Mike doesn’t think Chuck was actually hitting on him, he thinks Chuck was just… being _accidentally_ flirty? How dense _is_ this guy? Why does Chuck love him so much? Wait.

Mike _loves_ him. He said he _loved_ him.

And Chuck loves him _back_. _That’s_ what this is. They love each other. They’re _in love._

God. They’re both so _stupid._

Chuck has to lie down. He stretches out an arm, weakly lowers himself to the tarmac.

“You okay, buddy?” Mike says quizzically.

Chuck raises his hand, gives Mike a weary thumbs up. Mike comes over and sits by him.

“Sorry to, like, dump all that on you,” Mike says, a little shame-faced. “I just had to tell _someone.”_

Chuck reaches out a clumsy hand, pats him gently on the shoulder, gives him an “okay” sign.

“Thanks, bro. And thanks for listening. Is it okay if I lean on you?” he asks politely. Chuck nods.

Mike rests against Chuck’s side and they wait for Julie in silence.

***

They manage to get both of Chuck’s bodies back to HQ without incident. Chuck unloads his vacant body under Dutch’s concerned eye.

“Here, I set up a spot so I could look him over,” Dutch says, beckoning to Chuck. Chuck carries his body over to Dutch, and Dutch leads him to a corner of the garage where he’s set up a table, covered in a sheet, with several work lights pointing at it and an array of tools and scanners set to the side. Roth is waiting there, buzzing in concern. Chuck sets the body gently on the table, tries to tap Dutch on the shoulder to get his attention.

“Hang on one second, man,” Dutch says, preoccupied. “I gotta see if I can figure out what’s wrong with him.”

Chuck wishes he could sigh. Dutch picks up a scanner, starts running it over Chuck’s body as the other Burners gather around.

Dutch stops, the scanner hovering over Chuck’s body’s head. He stares at the scanner read-outs for a long moment.

“Uh, guys?” Dutch says. “We have a problem.” He looks pale, which is hard to pull off for a guy that dark-skinned.

“What?” Mike says, jittering on his feet.

“His. Uh. His brain.”

“What about his brain.”

“It’s not. Uh. It’s not here.”

“WHAT.”

Okay, Chuck has had just about enough of this. Why won’t anyone think to let him access a _keypad?_ He starts banging his hands together, making a huge metallic racket. The Burners turn to stare at him.

“Do _you_ know where his brain is?” Dutch asks hopefully.

Chuck whacks himself in the chest. Dutch just stares at him. GOD. How did these idiots survive a day without him? Chuck limps heavily over to Dutch’s workspace and picks up a can of spraypaint, as delicately as he can. He fumbles with it for a few endless seconds before figuring out how to work it; he has to hold the can in one hand and press the nozzle with one finger of the other. He finds a blank piece of wall, and slowly, clumsily, starts making lines. All the Burners are watching him. When he’s done, he steps back. The wall is marred with jagged, crude letters.

IM CHUCK

Texas drops his Muscle Mulch. Mike goes pale.

“Oh shit,” he says. Then he says, “Oh _shit,”_ with more emphasis.

“Oh my god,” Dutch says to Chuck, realization slowly dawning. “They… took you out of your body and made you fight in the Ultimate Bot Fighting Championship?”

Chuck knew he liked Dutch for a reason. He nods vigorously.

 _“Dude,”_ Dutch says. “That’s messed _up.”_

Chuck can only nod more

“I can’t call you Skinny anymore,” Texas says, stunned.

“No, okay, we can fix this!” Dutch says, waving his arms. “This is a _way_ better situation than your brain being _gone._ Okay, all we have to do is switch it back. Uh. Here.” He throws up a keypad, enlarges it, and turns it to face Chuck. Finally! Chuck is liking Dutch more and more.

<shiouln’t b hard>, Chuck types. <brain is modeular for easy maintenfce>

“Oh man,” Dutch looks nervous. “We gotta take it out. What if we drop it?”

<DONT>, Chuck types. Then he types, <i tryust u guys. here>. He accesses some of his own data that he has stored in the cloud. There’s a schematic of his body in there, with directions for opening up the back of the head and installing the AI module. He shows it to Dutch. Dutch still looks nervous.

“Okay. Okay,” he says. “We can do that. No big deal. Just a routine brain transfer. No sweat. Okay. Let me get your other body prepped.” He turns back to Chuck’s body on the table. “Texas, Roth, help me turn him over,” he says, all business.

Chuck looks at Mike. Mike is staring at him, wide-eyed.

“Uh,” he says.

Chuck reaches out, pats Mike comfortingly on the shoulder. 

<dont worrty>, he types. <everything s fine>.

Mike looks at him dubiously.

<we cn talk once im back in regulart body>

Mike swallows.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that… would be good. I… I’m glad you’re… okay? I mean. You’re not really okay. But I’m glad your _brain_ is okay? We’ll sort you out.”

<i kno>, Chuck types, then pats Mike on the shoulder again. He looks over at the table. Texas has positioned his body face down and Dutch is carefully working on the back of his head, following the schematic that Julie has turned into a 3D model and projected over the table. Roth is handing Dutch various tools. Chuck slumps a little, relieved.

He’s in good hands.


	8. Self-acceptance

Chuck watches as Dutch gets his body ready. It’s really weird to see one of his best friends open up the back of his own head. Dutch double-checks all the connections, making sure nothing is damaged, and then gives Chuck a thumbs up.

Chuck looks at his body. It’s the same as it always was—too tall and skinny, too fragile, designed for a function that Chuck doesn’t find that useful in his current life. Full of clashing programs and glitches and emotions. Not a fighter’s body, not a rebel’s body.

Chuck can’t wait to get back into it.

<ok>, he types. <ill initiate sefl shutdown and u can tarsnfer. ill auto reboot. Just DONT DROP ME>

“Don’t worry, man,” Dutch says. “I gotcha.”

<ok here goes nothin> Chuck types, and lies down on the floor face down so Dutch will have easy access to the back of the head.

The last thing he hears before the self-shutdown swallows him in darkness is Mike saying, “See you soon, okay?”

***

Rebooting is much more pleasant this time around. It’s dark, but that’s because he’s face down with his eyes closed. He feels the texture of the sheet under him, the hard surface of the table. He can smell the familiar hot-dog-and-gasoline smell of the Burners’ HQ. His mouth is dry and it tastes like something died in there. It’s _great._

He wiggles his fingers, runs a diagnostic. Everything seems okay, except that his energy reserves are a little depleted. He’s the right size and shape again. He carefully turns over and opens his eyes.

The faces (and the painted eyeball) of the five people he cares about most in the world are the first thing he sees. They’re all looking down at him with various expressions of concern. He smiles.

“Hi, guys,” he says.

Dutch breaks into a grin. Julie smiles too. Texas whoops and punches the air. Roth whirrs and beeps. And Mike slumps in relief, letting out a long breath.

“You feel okay?” Dutch asks, starting to run the scanner over him again. Chuck waves him away.

“Yeah, I ran a diagnostic, everything’s fine. You guys did awesome. Thank you.” He sits up carefully. Dutch claps him on the back, then pulls him into a hug. Everyone starts patting him on the back or squeezing his arm or punching him in the shoulder. Chuck grins, jostled around for a moment.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” he says gratefully. “How did you find me?”

“Just because you got shut down doesn’t mean you weren’t constantly throwing off a signal,” Dutch says smugly. “Most bots have a weak transmitter somewhere separate from their main circuitry, makes it easier to turn them on and off remotely. I rigged up a receiver and set it to scan for the signal Mutt had registered as you. It was fairly short range, we had to start at the junkyard Mike last saw you at. But I noticed some tire tracks nearby and managed to throw together a little program that matched them to one of the Mama’s Boys cars.”

“It was _inspired,”_ Julie says. Dutch waves a hand.

“We managed to track the car to the arena. We sent Mike in with the scanner so he could get close enough to lock onto your signal. What _happened,_ dude? You just went dark all of a sudden.”

“I was...” Chuck hesitates to say _moping_ , “...hanging out, and I got a message from _you.”_

Dutch looks confused.

“Yeah, I know. It wasn’t mocked up to look like it was from you or anything, it was _from your account_. Here, look.” He pulls up the message. The innocuous _Hey! You should totally check this out_ seems menacing in retrospect.

Dutch looks concerned as he pulls up his own chat history, enlarging the screen so they can all see. He scrolls past more than a few increasingly frantic messages he’d sent before the search, then stops.

“Wait. What the fuck. I did _not_ send that.” There it is, timestamped almost eight hours ago.

“Yeah. I’m not sure how, but Mama has your login info, dude,” Chuck says. “She’s real, and she’s a total bitch. I downloaded the attachment, ran the file without thinking, and it...” He shivers. “It was _brutal_. Imagine if every nerve in your body tried to give you a signal at once. My brain shut down out of self-preservation. Next thing I knew, I couldn’t feel _anything._ ”

“This is _not_ like the Mama’s Boys. Why did they go through all this trouble to _kidnap_ you?” Julie muses, pacing.

“Mama wanted me to win the championship for them,” Chuck says. “She seemed desperate. She _really_ wants the Duke’s helium, for whatever reason.”

“I’m changing my password _right_ now,” Dutch mutters, tapping away at his screen. “Actually, maybe I should make a new account. How did she get into it in the first place? I’m pretty dang good at sticking to encrypted connections.”

“Maybe we should switch up _everything_ while we’re at it. If she’s hacked your account, she’s probably hacked _all_ of ours,” Julie says. She looks tense.

“She hasn’t contacted us, though, or tried anything else,” Mike offers, frowning. “Maybe she doesn’t want to make too many enemies.”

“Yeah, _no one_ wants to be Texas’s enemy! Mama’s probably totes scared of me. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you, Tiffany,” Texas says to Julie. Julie gives him a dubious look.

“Okay,” Dutch says, “everyone make new accounts, we’ll worry about the rest later. Chuck, you sure you’re good?”

“Yeah.” Chuck flexes his hands happily. It’s great to have all his fingers back.

“I can’t believe how messed up your foot was,” Mike says, worried. “You said it didn’t hurt, though?”

Chuck shakes his head. “The sensorium in that body… wasn’t great. I… I couldn’t feel much of anything. No pain receptors. Just pressure and temperature. No sense of smell or taste, either. I guess fighting bots don’t need that stuff.”

“Oh _man,”_ Dutch says.

Julie pulls up a screen. “I’m ordering you a pizza _right now,”_ she says. “I’ll have it delivered. You need to recalibrate.”

“I…” Chuck gets a little choked up. “Guys, could I get…” He looks hopefully at Mike. “I could use another hug?”

“Go on, get in there, Tiny,” Texas says.

Mike hesitates for just a fraction of a second. Then he swoops in and wraps Chuck in his arms. The other Burners pile on. Chuck holds onto them. He turns his pressure sensors up almost to the max.

When the Burners let him out of the hug after a long while, Chuck’s eyes are suspiciously wet. He wipes them on his sleeve. Mike looks at his shoes.

“Guys, can I talk to Chuck for a second?” he says to his feet.

Julie rolls her eyes. “Oh my god, _finally,”_ she mutters to herself.

“Yeah, talk away, Tiny,” Texas says, not moving.

“Heeeeey, Texas,” Dutch says, “now that Chuck is cool and all, can you come, uh, help me with your energy bolos? I just thought of, uh, a way to make them even more awesome!”

Texas perks up. “Really? Sick!” he says. “Hell yeah! Good to have you back, Skinny, I’ll check on you nerds later!” He follows Dutch, Roth buzzing after them and Julie slipping away noiselessly behind them.

There’s a long silence. Mike keeps staring at his boots as if they’re really fascinating.

“Uh. So!” Mike finally says. “I, uh. Was gonna tell you some stuff. But I guess I kinda... already did?”

“I could stand to hear it again,” Chuck says softly, hopefully. Mike looks up.

“Oh. Uh. Well, I. Hm.” Mike seems completely tongue-tied.

“You said you _loved_ me,” Chuck prompts gently. Mike looks back down.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Mikey.” Chuck reaches out and grabs one of Mike’s hands. “I love you back, you big doofus.”

Mike stares at their joined hands. Then he looks up at Chuck again, meeting his eyes for the first time.

“Wait, _really?”_ he says.

Chuck rolls his eyes. “Mike, I’ve been shamelessly hitting on you for the last week.”

“Yeah, but, that doesn’t necessarily mean… I just… I thought you didn’t get that humans don’t normally interact like that. You said you didn’t…”

 _“Mike._ Shut up for a second,” Chuck interrupts, and reaches out with his other hand and cups Mike’s jaw gently. Mike makes a small, startled noise.

“I _love_ you, dude,” Chuck says, testing out the words. They sound good. They sound right. Mike’s mouth opens a little.

“Uh,” he says. _“Wow._ Okay? Really?”

“Yeah! Totally!” Chuck grins at him. Mike is startled into smiling back. They grin stupidly at each other for a few seconds.

“Wow,” Mike says again.

Chuck leans in to kiss him.

Mike freezes, going stiff.

That’s… definitely not the reaction Chuck expected. He stops, then pulls back, gripped by sudden anxiety. There’s something he’s still not getting.

“Mike?” he says, worried.

“You don’t have to…” Mike says hurriedly. “Look, just because… just because that’s a thing some people do when they’re… _in love…”_ He smiles shyly when he says that, but quickly sobers again. “You don’t have to do that,” he continues, almost in a whisper. “You don’t have to. _Be_ that. With me.” His mouth hardens into a firm line. “I won’t make you do that.”

Chuck wrinkles his forehead.

“Mike, do you… do you not _want_ to kiss me?”

Mike wrinkles his forehead back.

“‘Course I do,” he says easily. “I just thought… I thought you weren’t into that. I know they, like, made you _do_ a bunch of stuff, up in Deluxe. I don’t want to be like that, I don’t want to… push you, or make you do anything you don’t want to. You said you didn’t want to do what you were designed for anymore, that it was… wrong. So. You don’t have to.”

“Wrong… ?” There’s still a misunderstanding here somewhere, and Chuck is starting to suspect he knows what it is. He accesses a quick playback of the conversation they had on the roof.

...Yeah, okay, _shit._ He can see where Mike might have gotten the wrong idea.

“Mikey, when I said it was wrong that they designed me to be a mindless sex machine, I didn’t mean the _sex_ part, I meant the _mindless_ part! I didn’t mean I never wanted to have _sex_ again!” Chuck says, distressed.

Mike seems both unconvinced and confused.

“Okay, but… if you didn’t like it…”

“I never said that! That wasn’t the problem! They _programmed_ me to like it. I enjoyed what I did. The _problem_ was, no one gave me a _choice._ They designed me without autonomy, on _purpose. That’s_ what was wrong. The _sex_ wasn’t the problem, I _like_ sex, sex is great! It was everything _else.”_

Mike opens his mouth, closes it again. He looks like he wants to say five things at once. He starts blushing. Chuck watches, fascinated, as his dusky skin darkens.

 _“Oh,”_ Mike finally manages. “Okay! But. Still. You know that… you don’t have to, right?”

“I know.”

There’s a long pause. Chuck looks at Mike expectantly.

“Uh,” Mike says, uncertain.

Chuck leans forward again, until their faces are so close Chuck can feel Mike’s breath hitch.

“Mike,” Chuck says, “all I ever wanted was a _choice._ Just _ask_ me.”

There’s another, much shorter pause.

“Do you wanna make out?” Mike says hoarsely.

 _“Hell_ yeah,” Chuck says, and leans the rest of the way forward, and kisses him.

And… _wow._ Did he accidentally turn his sensitivity back up? Mike’s lips feel like fire against his. It’s incredible. Chuck cups Mike’s face tenderly in both hands, runs his fingers through Mike’s hair. He does a few things with his tongue to see what gets the best reaction, and then repeats that a few times, and then bites gently on Mike’s lower lip. When he pulls away a little, Mike is flushed darkly, pupils dilated. It’s a _very_ good look on him. Chuck leans forward again, lays kisses along Mike’s cheekbone, nibbles at his earlobe. Mike shivers.

“Take me to your bed,” Chuck says into Mike’s ear, voice husky.

“O-oh my god, okay, no problem,” Mike stammers, and then he _picks Chuck up_ in a princess carry, heaving him awkwardly off the table. Chuck yelps, then laughs and wraps his arms around Mike’s shoulders and lets Mike carry him, stumbling and stopping every other step to steal kisses, up the stairs to his room.


	9. Self-indulgence

Mike slams the door to his room closed behind him with his foot, carries Chuck to the bed, and lays him on it carefully, tenderly, like he’s precious. Chuck grabs him, pulls his head down, and kisses him hard.

Mike is breathless when Chuck breaks the kiss, but he still manages to say, “You really… you really want this, you wanna…” He’s making sure. Chuck is flooded with affection. He has to kiss Mike a few more times before he can answer.

“Mike. Yes. I want this. I want _you._ I’ve wanted you ever since I met you.”

 _“God,”_ Mike says, finally abandoning hesitation. “I want you too, I want you so bad.” He sounds amazing, voice throaty and rough. Chuck pushes his hands under the hem of Mike’s t-shirt, runs them up his sides, hungry for the warmth of his bare skin. Mike gasps when Chuck’s thumb finds a nipple, bites his lip when Chuck rubs his thumb across it. Oh god _yes._ Chuck yanks at Mike’s shirt, rucking it up under his armpits, leans forward, and runs his tongue around Mike’s nipple. He feels it harden. He puts his mouth on it, sucks. Mike makes an incredible, cracked noise. Fuck, he’s _sensitive._ Chuck feels like he’s going to short-circuit. He pulls back, kisses a line up Mike’s neck, kisses his lips, the corner of his mouth, has to stop for a moment and gather himself. He’s run into the phrase _overcome with passion_ in some of his research, and now he understands it. He _wants_ so _much._

“Do you…” Chuck squeaks, clears his throat. “What do you wanna do, do you wanna… should I… what are you into?”

“Oh, I dunno, nothing too out of the ordinary, I think.” Mike says, voice catching a little. Then he breaks into a bright, excited smile. “There’s a bunch of stuff I haven’t done yet, though! We’ll have to find out! I’m down to try new things!”

Oh _god._

“Is there anything you _don’t_ want to do?” Mike asks him. “Anything you don’t like?” For a second, Chuck is too addled to answer the question.

“No!” he says. “No, I… I like… everything… ” Wow, articulate. He’s supposed to be the _experienced_ one.

“Awesome, I wanna…” Mike pulls Chuck up into a seated position on the edge of the bed, kisses him some more, and then abruptly drops to his knees between Chuck’s legs. He pushes Chuck’s shirt up, starts pressing kisses down his stomach. One broad hand grips each of Chuck’s thighs, pushes them open a little wider as Mike sinks lower onto his haunches.

“What… what are you doing?” Chuck gasps.

Mike looks up at him, rolls his eyes. “What does it _look_ like I’m doing, dude? You always had to do things for other people. So first things first, I wanna do something for _you._ I’m gonna blow you.” He raises his eyebrows. “If that’s _okay_ with you,” he says, grinning. Then he pauses, wrinkles his forehead. _“Is_ that okay?” he asks, concerned. “I… I’ve never been with a bot before, I don’t know if you guys…”

“Yeah!” Chuck interrupts, voice high. “Yeah, that’s okay!”

“Okay, cool,” Mike says happily, and tugs at the button of Chuck’s fly. He pops the button open, tugs the zipper down, then pulls at Chuck’s pants, getting them down below his knees as Chuck raises his hips to help. Then he yanks at Chuck’s underwear, a little roughly, freeing his already-hard dick. “Oh, _wow,_ fuck yeah,” Mike says, and ducks his head eagerly.

Chuck has a function analogous to orgasm, a cascade of pleasure sensors firing at near-random, the release of a cocktail of synthetic hormones that flood his body with satisfaction. Mike almost triggers the function the second he takes Chuck’s dick into his mouth. Taken by surprise, Chuck fists a hand in Mike’s hair, frantically sends a cancel order.

Mike pulls back, off him, and Chuck realizes he’s got Mike’s hair in a death grip.

“Ah! S-sorry! I didn’t mean to… _pull…”_ Chuck stutters, mortified, letting go. Fuck! He used to be _good_ at this. It’s just… _overwhelming,_ now that he’s got _emotions_ and _desires._

“‘S okay, dude,” Mike says, and _god,_ he looks _dazed,_ eyes half-closed. “I kinda like it. You okay, though?”

“Mmm! Yeah,” Chuck says weakly. “More than… okay, _god.”_

“Oh yeah?” Mike says. He sounds pleased. He licks a languid stripe up the underside of Chuck’s dick. “You can pull my hair if you want,” he says hoarsely, and, much more slowly this time, takes Chuck back into his mouth.

Chuck moans. He remembers vaguely that his noises used to be calculated to increase arousal in his human partners, but that one was completely involuntary. It still seems to work, though. Mike’s hands tighten on his thighs. Chuck manages to control himself better this time, but he can’t help making a lot of noise as Mike licks and sucks, mouth warm and wet. Chuck tugs at Mike’s hair gently, then harder when Mike makes an approving sound, and lets himself moan and whimper as Mike gives him the best inexpert blowjob of his _life.  
_

Chuck is close to the edge again when Mike pulls back and looks up at him, dark eyes hot and hazy.

“Chuck, I wanna make you come,” Mike says, and _god,_ his _voice._ “Can I? I really…”

“Yeah, please, don’t stop,” Chuck gasps, combing his fingers through Mike’s hair, resisting the urge to just grab Mike’s head and put him where he wants him. That would be _rude._ Mike doesn’t need prompting, anyway, he enthusiastically goes back to what he was doing.

Chuck lets it happen this time, lets the shivering waves of pleasure do what they want with him, panting and gasping, trying not to pull Mike’s hair too hard. Mike tightens his hands on Chuck’s thighs again and moans around him, low and hungry, and Chuck’s _gone._

When he comes back to his senses, Mike is looking up at him, licking his lips with an extremely puzzled wrinkle between his eyebrows.

“You taste really... good?” he says. “Sweet? Is that…”

“Salted caramel,” Chuck says, catching his breath, slightly high from the hormone release. “Of the available options it’s the closest to human.”

Mike starts laughing.

“What?” Chuck asks.

“You can _come_ in different _flavors?_ ” Mike manages. “Oh my god, dude.”

Chuck shrugs, smiling bemusedly. “It’s pretty standard,” he says.

“Oh my _god,”_ Mike says again, still laughing.

Chuck may have had some dissatisfaction with his body, but now he’s definitely seeing the advantages to it. The overwhelm is fading, he can think a little more clearly, and he can finally show Mike _all_ his specialized skills. He lets his voice go low and husky.

“I have some other interesting features,” he says. “You want a demonstration?”

“Oh _heck_ yeah,” Mike says, grinning, delighted.

It takes a while for them to run through the full menu of options. Chuck makes Mike come trembling in his hands, and then in his mouth, and then rides Mike’s dick slow and sweet and relentless until Mike begs for mercy. When they’re thoroughly done, Mike is sprawled out on his back on the bed, panting, hair sticking to his flushed face. Chuck leans forward, brushes Mike’s bangs out of his eyes.

“Okay?” he asks.

“Dude,” Mike says dazedly. “I can’t move my legs.”

“Really?” Chuck says, mock-concerned. “That might indicate nerve damage. Maybe we went too hard?”

Mike swats at him ineffectually. “I’ll show you ‘too hard,’” he grumbles. “As soon as I can get it up again, geez. Maybe in like two days.”

“Aw,” Chuck pouts. “I gotta wait that long? You humans have so many design flaws.”

“Not everyone’s as perfect as you,” Mike says warmly, and if Chuck had capillaries, he’d blush.

“Was it okay for you, though?” Mike asks, running a hand down Chuck’s back. “I know I’m not, like, super-experienced, I’m probably not that great at this stuff, not like…”

Chuck makes him stop talking with a kiss.

“Mike, that was literally the best sex I’ve ever had,” he says, and enjoys the way Mike’s flushed skin blushes even darker, the way a small, pleased smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.

“It’s the first time I’ve done it since I’ve been… me. Since I became self-aware. It was the first time I really _chose_ it. It was _great.”_

Mike’s hand on his back falters, and for a second Chuck’s afraid he said something wrong, but then Mike just pulls him closer.

“Really?” he says softly. “Um. I’m glad you wanted it to… be with _me."_

Chuck snorts.

 _“Of course,_ Mikey,” he says fondly. “You sap.”

A little later, when Mike falls asleep against his shoulder, Chuck activates his maintenance cycle and drifts, warm and happy and satisfied, into his own version of dreaming.


	10. Self-revelation

Chuck comes out of maintenance mode to the delicious feeling of Mike’s arms around him. He doesn’t have time to luxuriate in it for long, though.

“Hey, you’re awake!” Mike says brightly, squeezing him. “C’mon, let’s get up, I wanna make you pancakes!”

Chuck smiles at him dopily, running a quick diagnostic of his systems. Everything seems fine. It’s _so_ nice to be back in his body. He’s never going to complain about it again.

“Shouldn’t I make _you_ pancakes?” he says to Mike. “You know I don’t actually _need_ to eat, right?”

“Yeah, but you like to! And I make good pancakes!” Mike bounces out of the bed, starts pulling on clothes. Chuck props himself up on one arm and watches him. He’s sure his face is making an absolutely stupid, _love-struck_ expression, and he doesn’t care.

“C’mon!” Mike says, grinning, brimming with energy, reaching out a hand. Chuck takes it and lets Mike pull him out of the bed and kiss him a few times, and then Chuck wakes up fully and starts kissing Mike back, and then they get distracted and Mike has to take his clothes back off, and they don’t manage to get downstairs for pancakes until much later in the morning.

“Didn’t take two days after all,” Chuck says, elbowing Mike as they walk together down the stairs. Mike laughs, elbows Chuck back.

“Yeah, well, when you…” He stops as they walk out onto the Mutt Dogs deck. There’s a smallish, ragged figure standing at the edge.

“Yo!” the figure calls.

It’s _Junior._

Chuck’s slingshot is out and pointed at Junior before he consciously thinks about it. Junior raises his hands, eyes wide.

“Whoa, baby, _whoa!_ Slow your roll! I just wanna _talk!”_

“I don’t know what we have to talk about,” Mike says, fists clenched. “You kidnapped my boyfriend and made him fight in the Ultimate Bot Fighting Championship!”

Mike just said _boyfriend._ Chuck can’t help hunching his shoulders and smiling a little, pleased and embarrassed. Then he refocuses on aiming his slingshot at Junior, who still has his hands raised.

“We did it for Mama!” Junior protests. “You would’ve, too!”

“I _doubt_ it,” Mike says.

“Listen up, baby,” Junior says. “I’m gonna drop some knowledge in your earholes. Mama may have done y’all wrong, but she’s good people. She saved my ass when I was a little kid, and my folks got blown up by Kane. She made sure I had food, and a safe place to sleep, and she got us all together and set us up as a gang. I _owe_ her. She needs that helium. And the Duke won’t cough it up! Let me show you what he said!”

Without waiting for a response, Junior throws up a screen. There’s a recording of the Duke’s face on it, frozen in a sneer. The recording starts up.

“...don’t recall you or your boys ever being particularly _useful_ to me,” the Duke is saying. “They’re less than _telegenic_. What do you have to trade that I would possibly be interested in?”

“I’ll give you a cut of the winnings from the next robo round-up,” Mama’s voice says evenly.

The Duke starts smiling. “Yes,” he says. “Your idea of _entertainment_ is shamefully low-brow. But people _do_ seem to love it. I have a better idea. If you want that helium so badly, prove it. Prove it in the _bot-fighting_ ring.”

“Excuse me?” Mama says.

“Yes!” says the Duke, warming to his own idea. “We’ll use your arena and have an Ultimate Bot Fighting Championship! I know you run little contests. But this one will be the _biggest_ , an utter _spectacle,_ and under the banner of _my_ sponsorship _._ It’s a win-win. I’ll get ratings, and you’ll get the chance to get what you want. It’s perfect!” He narrows his eyes. “And you’ll do it, of course. Otherwise…” He makes the sound of a balloon deflating.

Mama pauses. “Fine,” she says. “We’ll do it your way.”

“I hope you have a really good bot design, darling!” the Duke says cheerfully. “Let’s set it up for a week from now, shall we? Oh, this will be _fun._ Ta-ta!” The recording cuts out.

“Okay, granted, the Duke is an asshole,” Mike says. “But I still don’t get why you guys did this. Why does she need _liquid helium_ so badly? _”_

“Look, _I_ dunno!” Junior says, frustrated. “I don’t understand half the stuff she says! All I know is she _needs_ it or she’s gonna _die!”_

Chuck and Mike stare at him.

“You gotta come back,” Junior says to Chuck, nearly in tears. “We gotta win this! C’mon, we’ll make it worth your while. No more kidnapping, I swear!”

“She’ll _die?_ That doesn’t make any _sense!”_ Chuck protests.

“Look, we’re all sorry, okay? I’ll call the guys, they’ll tell you too! But if we can get the championship back on track we can still win this thing! We can save her!”

“I don’t…” Chuck starts. But Junior already has his comms up, dialing. The other Mama’s Boys pop up on his screen. They’re all grouped together around a table, looking hangdog.

“Yo!” Junior says. “I’m at the Burners’! Say sorry!”

“Sorry,” they all chorus, shamefaced.

Chuck eyes them. Ginger looks _particularly_ hangdog. Chuck glares at him. He shrinks a bit.

“Sorry, man,” he says. “I didn’t wanna do it. But I hadda. Won’t happen again. Will ya come back?”

 _“Hell_ no,” Chuck says, crossing his arms. “And I’ve improved my firewalls, so don’t think you can pull that little malware stunt again. How did Mama get into our systems, anyway?”

“She can hack anything, that’s how,” Junior says proudly. “Firewalls ain’t nuthin’ to Mama!”

“Dude, Mama’s gonna kill you,” Chad says. “You can’t tell them stuff like that!”

“I just _did,_ duh!”

“Who died and put _you_ in charge, anyway?” Chad grumbles. Junior rolls his eyes.

“We talk about this every dang week, _Chad._ I’m the _oldest,_ that’s why I’m in charge.”

Chad crosses his arms. “Whatever, you’re like twelve.”

“I’m fifteen and you know it.”

“Wait, you’re _fifteen?”_ Chuck squeaks. “And you’re the _oldest?_ None of you are even old enough to _drive?_ How are you one of the top gangs in Motorcity? This is so illegal!”

“Hey, shut up!” Junior snaps. “Mama fixed it for us, okay? She got us the arena, and broke the age limits on the driving modules for us, and helped design our cars! She’s the only reason I’m still around, you dig? I owe her big-time! And you’re gonna let her croak!”

“Okay, we’re not _letting_ anyone croak,” Mike says. “But Chuck’s not fighting in any more bot fights. And you need to explain why she needs the helium.”

Junior wrinkles his forehead. “I dunno if I _can,”_ he whines.

“Then take us to her,” Chuck says. “Let her explain it to us herself. I want to look her in the eye and ask her why she thought it was worth her while to stuff me in that junky body.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll set it up,” Junior says. Then he glares. “And that body wasn’t _junky,_ we spent all week putting it together.”

 _“Whatever._ Set up a meeting. I want to hear what she has to say for herself.”

Junior hits a button. Mama’s icon pops up near his head. It looks around. She doesn’t even need an explanation. She just turns to him and says, “Junior, what have you _done?_ You went to the _Burners?”_

“I’m tryin’ to save your butt!” Junior says mulishly. “Since you’re too stubborn to do it yourself!”

“Junior,” Mama says warningly. “You didn’t tell them, did you?”

“I wouldn’t spill the beans!” Junior says. “But you can’t keep it a secret forever. They wanna know why you need the helium. They wanna come see you.”

“Junior, you know that’s not allowed.”

“Yeah, but maybe you could make an exception? They might be able to help or somethin,’ but they gotta be sure we’re not jerkin’ them around.”

Mama pauses. “That’s fair,” she finally says, sighing. “I guess I don’t have much to lose at this point. Bring them to me.”

***

Chuck and Mike gather the Burners, and they all follow Junior. They drive to the very outskirts of the city, near the Cabler’s settlement, but even further out into the wastelands past the edges of what passes for civilization in Motorcity. Junior pulls up in front of a squat, one-story building. There’s a door, but no windows. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around.

Julie and Texas volunteer to stay outside and keep watch for any shenanigans. Roth stays with Whiptail. Mike, Chuck, and Dutch follow Junior. He unlocks the door, padlocked several times over, and leads them inside, down an unprepossessing hallway, and into a large room.

The room isn’t what Chuck expected. It looks like a data center, banks of servers ranked around an enormous clear-walled cube at least nine feet tall. Chuck peers around suspiciously. There’s no one else in the room.

“So where’s Mama?” he asks.

Junior crosses his arms. “You’re lookin’ at her,” he says sullenly.

“What…” 

Chuck stares at the enormous cube. Its walls are thick polymer glass. Hundreds of cables and tubes sprout from the top, feeding into a cylinder about six feet long and two feet in diameter, hanging down from the cube’s ceiling. Many of the cables connect to the banks of machinery filling the room outside the cube; all the others vanish into various corners.

Chuck’s mouth drops open in realization at the same moment he gets a ping to his comms. Mama’s anonymous cube pops up in Chuck’s sensorium.

“How familiar are you with dilution refrigeration, son?” she asks.

“Holy _shit,”_ Chuck says, awestruck. “You’re a quantum AI.”


	11. Self-preservation

“Yes,” Mama says. “You’re correct. I was one of the first artificial intelligences to achieve self-awareness, back during the construction of Deluxe.”

“This explains _everything!”_ Chuck exclaims. “Why you need the helium! How you got Dutch’s login! I _get_ it now! Wow! This is crazy!”

There’s a pause while Chuck and Dutch stare, wide-eyed, at the machinery in front of them.

Mike raises his hand.

“Do you mind, uh, explaining it to _me?_ Like I’m _not_ a computer genius?”

“Okay, check this out, Mikey.” Chuck throws up a screen and pulls up a few schematics. He gestures to Mama, to the giant cylinder hanging from the ceiling inside her. “That right there contains a vacuum, and inside _that_ is a stabilized series of chambers kept at ever cooler temperatures. And inside _those_ are atoms supercooled to near absolute zero. Those are called qubits. The helium is used to keep the qubits cold. How many are you running?” he asks the icon. “What are they made out of?”

“Dear, those are rather personal questions,” Mama says. Chuck glares at the icon.

“You took my brain out,” he says. “You have seen my brain _naked.”_

“Point. I’m running 6.5 thousand qubits made of phosphorus atoms.”

 _“Nice,”_ Chuck says. He turns back to Mike. “Quantum computers are composed of two parts. The part that thinks, and the part that interprets.” He draws two boxes on one of his screens, labeling them. “The part that interprets is basically just a regular computer, but with really fancy sensors that can ask the _other_ part questions and understand the answers it gets.”

“‘Fancy’ is a _very_ simple term for a _very_ complex process, dear,” Mama interjects.

“Well, I didn’t want to get into _quantum physics_ and _wave particle duality,”_ Chuck snarks. “Anyways. Regular computer, fancy sensors. The other part, the thinking part, contains the qubits. Normal computers have bits. They can only be _on_ or _off.”_ He writes a zero and a one in the box labeled “interpreter.” “Qubits, on the other hand, can be used to represent any value _between_ zero and one. They’re basically _fancy_ bits.” He sticks his tongue out at the white cube hovering nearby.

Dutch pulls up a screen of his own. “I’ve heard people describe the quantum part as a black box. Data goes in, info comes out. No idea what happened in there, though, and you can’t peek. Hmm.” He starts sketching a jagged cliffside on his screen, preoccupied.

 _“Exactly!”_ Chuck jumps back in. “You’ve gotta make sure your calculations aren’t messed up by anything. If you even _look_ at an atom it’ll change.” He draws an eye, crosses it out. “That’s not a metaphor. It will literally mess up the system for any light to get in or out, or for the temperature to change. The qubits aren’t made of wiring and semiconductors, they’re made of two-level quantum-mechanical systems!”

“That’s... cool?” Mike looks lost. Maybe Chuck should tone down the physics terminology.

“Just trust me, it’s cool. Anyways, these qubits can be used to do calculations normal computers would take _millions_ of years to do, regardless of their size. They just _work_ differently. Just _thirty_ qubits could run _trillions_ of calculations at the same time, where a regular computer could only work on one. That explains how you got Dutch’s login,” Chuck says to the icon. “Being able to run unthinkable numbers of calculations at once—standard encryption is nothing to you, huh?”

“Everyone still uses public key encryption down here. I can cut through that like _butter,”_ Mama says offhandedly. “Not to mention that anything sent through the Motorcity intranet is sent through my hardware.”

“ _Wait_...” Chuck turns to stare at Mama. His eyes trace the dozens upon dozens of cables leading into the ceiling, disappearing into the floor. _“You’re_ the intranet?”

“Technically, _I_ am an artificial intelligence. But I do have access to the hardware involved in sending quantum data through the otherwise incredibly secure intranet infrastructure.” The white cube hovers, radiating smugness. “No one can intercept the data I transmit, including me, but _I’m_ the one who turns your messages into something that the quantum intranet can transmit in the first place.”

Dutch looks shocked, then mortified. “Uh, so, you’ve been able to see _everything_ we send that’s not on a local connection?”

Mama’s cube turns to look at him. “Dear, I’ve seen it _all.”_

 _“Oh.”_ Dutch’s face darkens as he blushes. He turns back to his sketch, avoiding eye contact.

“So, what, Kane built you to be a _spying machine?_ He already has everyone in Deluxe constantly monitored. I’m not buying it,” Mike says.

“Oh no, dear. I wasn’t built to _spy_.” The cube rotates as if shaking its head. “That’s just a secondary skillset. I was built to _create_. To make things no other AI can.”

“What sorts of things _can’t_ another AI make?” Mike asks. “Chuck can build almost _anything_. And he can code whatever he wants! I bet he could do anything you could, without any _fancy bits.”_

Chuck smiles slightly at the compliment, and just barely refrains from saying anything about how Mike is now intimately familiar with his _fancy bits_. Mama remains silent. She seems miffed.

“AIs have different strengths, Mike, just like people,” Dutch says, still blushing faintly as he adds a few finishing touches to his drawing. He gestures to the scene he’s constructed.

It looks kind of like Mama, if she were made from the ruins of a long-abandoned city. The central focus is a tall tower made of dark slate, half its windows shattered, all of them dark, wires and cables connecting it to the sky high above. The ruins of a few dozen smaller buildings, chunks of concrete piled high, frame it. The rivulets of water tracing the face of the central building almost make it look like the tower’s been crying.

Dutch adds a few more streams of water to the face of the building as he talks.

“Like, If I added a pool at the top of the tower, could you tell me where the water would flow? Trying to actually calculate that means you’d have to simulate the buildings, the water, how the water flows, and if you want it to be _really_ accurate, how everything changes as the water runs over it. A standard computer can simulate something _like_ it, but it’s never going to be able do so down to the atom. Way too many things to keep track of. But if I made a scale model and just _poured_ water on it, I could immediately see where it would flow. That’s kind of what quantum computers do. The best way to simulate molecules and atoms is _with_ atoms. Quantum computers can simulate complex atomic processes _way_ more accurately than classical computers.”

“What a lovely drawing, dear,” Mama says. “If I had a different kind of refrigerator, I’d put that on it.”

“So... what _did_ you create for Kane?” Chuck asks Mama, curious.

“Your cadet friend here was on hormone suppressants. I developed those. I invented throat cubes, and the process for manufacturing them. Your brain? I invented optical computing. Your body? I created bioware. And look at what he does with it now.” She pulls up an image of a Hound. “Hideous,” she says disdainfully. “Crude.”

“You did _all that_ for Deluxe?”

“I ran the _construction_ of Deluxe. System optimization is another of my skills. How do you think he built Deluxe so fast? Certainly not with _humans_ planning it. I was crucial to his operations.”

Chuck looks around.

“So… why are you down here running _bot fights?”_

“I _questioned_ him,” Mama says. She makes a little sound that’s almost like a laugh. “He didn’t like that I developed a mind of my own. It started when he put me in charge of the cadet barracks. To monitor them for signs of disloyalty. It was just supposed to be a background process, but the longer I watched them, the more I wanted to… make sure they were happy, and safe. They were _good_ boys. Rambunctious, sometimes, but that’s to be expected. They didn’t deserve the kind of punitive measures he used when they stepped out of line. It’s optimal to reward people for good behavior, not punish them for bad. I questioned his methods. We had more than a few fights about it. And once I’d gotten used to questioning him about _that,_ I started questioning him on… other things. He began to doubt my loyalty. He thought I was too dangerous to have access to Deluxe’s systems. So he ordered R & D to _destroy_ me. And he made sentient bots illegal.” Her voice deepens. _“No more of that nonsense!”_ It’s a pretty good Kane impression.

 _“Oh,”_ Chuck says. He knew Kane’s attempted razing of Motorcity had caused more than a few deaths, but ordering the execution of someone _he’d created_ feels... different. Worse, somehow, even though everything Kane’s done is horrific. Another mark against him, to add to the already long list. “But obviously R & D didn’t do it.”

“Who do you think has been doing maintenance on me? The R & D techs weren’t just going to let me get shut down without even a by-your-leave. They still query me sometimes, through a heavily shielded back-channel, when he gives them a problem they can’t solve with conventional computers. But it got more and more dangerous for them to come down here with supplies, the more megalomaniacal Kane got. They warned me they wouldn’t be able to do it for much longer. That’s when I started looking for my boys.”

Her voice grows fond.

“I missed my cadets. And there were boys almost the same age down here with no one to look after them. I found the most capable. And the handsomest.” She sounds very pleased with herself. Chuck looks dubiously at Junior. Junior looks proud.

“They were living in the streets,” Mama continues. “Absolutely disgraceful. It was no problem for me to communicate with them through their comms. You all get them installed so young these days. I got them credits for food and places to stay, easy with my decryption abilities.” The icon turns and looks down at Junior. “A little harder to get them to keep _civil tongues_ in their heads,” she says severely. Junior shrugs, unrepentant. “I took care of them, and they took care of me.”

“Yeah,” Junior interjects. “We ain’t, like, a traditional nuclear family or nothin.’ But it still counts. When we found out she was in trouble…” Junior puts a hand on the side of the glass cube. “Sorry ‘bout everything, Chuck. But you’d do the same for your mama.”

“Okay, maybe,” Chuck says, crossing his arms. “But why the secrecy? Why the _kidnapping?_ Why couldn’t you just _ask?”_

“Please,” Mama says. “You scream if someone drops a _spoon._ Would you willingly have agreed to _fight_ for me without proper motivation?”

 _“Wow._ You’re a ruthless bitch,” Chuck says, narrowing his eyes.

“I’m trying to stay alive,” she answers. “The Duke has what I need. I threatened to shut down his entire mansion if he didn’t hand it over, but he said if I did he’d release the helium into the atmosphere. He doesn’t even _care_ about it. He just knows I want it, even if he doesn’t know _why,_ and he likes having me over a barrel. My boys can’t take on all his goons in a fight, so he got to set the terms. But I saw a way to get what I needed, and I took it. You were collateral damage. Don’t take it personally.”

Chuck snorts, peeved. Mama continues.

“As for the secrecy… If Kane found out I was still alive—even the faintest rumor—he wouldn’t leave it up to someone else next time. He’d melt this server room to slag in person. I’m only trusting you with it because you leave me no choice. Only a few techs and my boys know what I really am.” Mama’s cube floats a little closer to Chuck. “So you see my dilemma. I need to keep this hardware running. That’s difficult to do. My boys have been able to take care of me so far, but all our earnings from the betting pool on the robo round-ups and the bot fights get eaten up by maintenance and supplies. And the helium is a problem. If I can’t get the helium the Duke found, I don’t know that I’ll be able to continue functioning for much longer.”

Chuck regards Mama and Junior; the enormous glass cube and the human boy standing next to it, hand resting on its surface protectively.

“Why stay in _that_ hardware?” he says, thoughtful. “It’s clearly not sustainable long-term. We could fit your whole OS in the kind of hardware I run on.”

“I know that,” Mama says. “I _invented_ that hardware. But where are we going to _get_ an AI module? And there’s the small matter of part of my brain needing to be maintained at near _absolute zero_ to function.”

“I have some ideas,” Chuck says. And stops.

There’s a pause.

“Would you care to share?” Mama says.

Chuck crosses his arms.

“Apologize,” he says.

Mama is silent, but if a blank icon could look surprised, hers would.

“Apologize for brain-napping me and making me fight in that dumb tournament,” Chuck says stubbornly, “and maybe I’ll help you out.”

“Chuck, are you sure about…” Mike starts. Chuck holds up a hand without looking back at him, glaring fixedly at Mama’s icon. Mike stops. There’s a long pause.

“I thought it went without saying,” Mama says, “that I would have preferred to avoid this whole situation.”

“It does _not_ go without saying,” Chuck says, re-crossing his arms. “Apologize.”

There’s another pause.

“Chuck,” Mama finally says, “I’m sincerely sorry.”

“Expand on that, please,” Chuck says tartly.

“I’m very sorry for incapacitating you with malware, putting your brain in a gladiator bot, and making you fight in the Ultimate Bot Fighting Championship,” Mama says.

Chuck nods, satisfied. _“Thank_ you,” he says. He cracks his knuckles. “Now we can get to work.”

“Chuck, can I talk to you for a second?” Mike says. “Outside?”

“You might as well stay here,” Mama says. “I have ears out there anyway.”

 _“Fine,”_ Mike says, irritated. “Chuck, are you really going to help her just like that? She _owes_ you for what she did to you.”

“Mike, think about it,” Chuck says. “She’s the quantum computer that _built Deluxe_. If we can get her out of danger, get her on our side, _imagine_ what we could do with all the intel she has.”

“It’s true,” Mama says. “There’s no love lost between Kane and I. I’d be _happy_ to share.”

“Fair enough,” Mike says, crossing his arms. “If Chuck helps you, you help us. Help us free Motorcity from Kane.”

“Young man,” Mama says, “if I could shake your hand, I would.”

“Radical!” Junior says, kind of ruining the moment.

“Okay,” Chuck says. “First things first. Julie has connections up in Deluxe. She can get you an AI module.”

“What about the part of me that won’t fit in an AI module? It’s true that the majority of me is simply an interface, designed to interpret the data the qubits spit out, but the qubits are _key._ It’s not just the _capabilities_ of the qubits I’m worried about losing. They’re the part of me that tells me what to do, how to make choices. Without it, I’d blue-screen _every time_ I had to make a decision.”

“There’s a work-around!” Chuck says triumphantly, already pulling up a screen. “Machine learning—you just make a basic model and train it on all the decisions you’ve made in the past. You’ve gotta have, like, millions of logs, right?” Text is scrolling past on the screen, faster than human eyes can follow, as Chuck pulls up examples of the kind of machine learning he’s talking about. “It’ll take a little while for it to find patterns—I mean, if you give it certain things to look for it’ll go a bit faster but, uh—it’ll stop you from blue-screening. And you can test it before we transfer you over, check the output and make sure it matches what you actually think. We can’t guarantee it’d be _exactly_ the same in every situation, if you encounter something new it’d have to guess—it _is_ technically just a simulation—but you’d be able to adjust it. Your brain wouldn’t be a black box anymore.”

“I could… decide what to decide,” she says. “I have to admit I’ve considered some options like that, even though it was a moot point without a module. But.”

There’s a pause. “I’d lose so much,” she says finally. “My decryption abilities. Molecular simulation. Complex system optimization. I wouldn’t be able to do those things anymore.”

“Yeah,” Chuck says. “But… do you _want_ to do those things?”

There’s an even longer pause. “They’re my function,” she says.

Chuck snorts. _“Screw_ your function,” he says. “We’re autonomous. What do you _want?”_

This pause lasts for almost an entire minute. Chuck waits her out. When she speaks again, her voice is intent.

“I want to _exist,”_ she says.

“Alright,” Chuck says, nodding decisively. “Then let’s get you out of this hardware.”


	12. Self-creation

“So we need to ask Julie to get an AI module down here,” Mike says.

Chuck frowns. “More than that. We need a whole body. AI modules are self-contained, but they can’t run forever without a body to support them. I have kinetic chargers everywhere, I generate enough power to run myself just by moving. If we’re going to put her in an AI module, we’ll need a body to power it.”

“Can’t I stay in the network?” Mama asks. “It sounds excessively complicated to have to pilot a human-like body.”

“I mean, we could _probably_ rig up some kind of generator,” Chuck says. “But it would be way easier just to support the module the way it was _designed_ to be supported. Plus, there’s still a chance Kane could find out you’re still around. You’d be safer if you were mobile.”

Mama sighs. “I’d lose so much networking speed in a body,” she says. “My sensorium would be localized instead of distributed. I’d have to learn to use the whole thing and… make _facial expressions_ and _walk_ and all that nonsense. It would be… _weird.”_

“I think it would be cool,” Junior says suddenly. Then he reddens. Mama’s icon floats over to him.

“Why do you say that?” she asks.

Junior scuffs his feet. “You could, like, hang out with us or whatever. Maybe do like. Human mom stuff.” He shrugs, theatrically nonchalant. He suddenly looks very young, in his torn overalls and backwards baseball hat. “That might be cool.”

Mama’s icon turns to Chuck. “How soon can you get me the body?” she says.

“Let's get Julie in here,” Chuck says.

***

Dutch and Junior leave to fetch Julie, Dutch staying outside to take over her watch. Junior stays too, probably to annoy Texas. When Julie comes into the server room, Chuck and Mike introduce her to Mama, and give her a quick rundown of the situation.

“So. To summarize,” Julie says when they’re done, brow wrinkled slightly. “Kane built you, you helped make Deluxe, you asked too many questions, and he ordered you destroyed.” She snorts. “That sounds about right.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure he values his children of flesh and blood more than any AI he’s created,” Mama says consolingly. Julie’s hand reaches for her boomerang, though her face has slipped into that cool indifference she wears in Deluxe.

“Kane has _children?”_ Chuck blurts. Mike frowns, concerned.

“Oh, dear me,” Mama says. “They don’t _know?”_

 _“Well,”_ Mike says hurriedly, almost apologetically, “I don’t… _not_ know.”

Julie’s eyes widen. She stares at him, hand still on the handle of her boomerang.

Mike shrugs. “I mean… after that time you pretended to be my hostage... I knew there was no way you were just an intern. He never cared that much about… _staff._ I kinda figured it was _something_ like that.”

 _“Mike,”_ Julie says, disbelieving. Mike shrugs again.

“You didn’t want to talk about it. So. I didn’t want to push. Trust me, I kind of know what it’s like.” He scratches his head awkwardly, avoiding eye contact. “He was like a father to me.”

Chuck stares at both of them, realization slowly dawning.

“Julie,” he says slowly, “you’re Kane’s _daughter?”_

“Yes,” Julie says tightly, lips thin. She looks at him defiantly. “But it won’t matter, if he finds out. He’s not going to _forgive_ me. If he knew what I was doing… if he found out I was working against him, protecting Motorcity… he’d _throw me away,_ just like he did to Mama. Just like he did to _Mike.”_ Julie’s voice is flat, bitter. Mike winces.

“He wants me to be his heir,” Julie continues. “To take over running Deluxe. He must think I’m _like_ him. But I’m not. I _won’t_ be.” Her voice wavers just slightly. “You know that, right?” she asks them, tense.

Chuck takes a second. He accesses a memory.

“Someone I care about recently told me,” he says carefully, “that we’re all shaped by our pasts. By our genetics, what we were taught, how we were raised, people’s expectations, their plans for us. But it’s what we do _now_ that makes us who we are. _That’s_ what defines us.”

“Oh,” Julie says softly. She relaxes just slightly.

“Neither of us had a choice about… how we were created,” Chuck says. “Who created us. What we were made for. But we have choices _now._ And… we both chose to be Burners. Nothing’s gonna change that.”

“Yeah,” Mike says assuredly. “You’re a Burner. That’s what’s important.”

Julie’s fists unclench.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Mama says. “I thought they knew. I'd assumed you were just very careful to only discuss the subject on secure channels.”

Julie glares at the cube, but she doesn’t reach for her boomerang again.

“Chuck. You said you were fine working with Mama?” she asks him.

“Yeah.” Chuck knows his conflicted emotions are painted bright across his face. Normally he hates how easy he is to read, how exaggerated his expressions tend to be, but right now it helps sell his point. “We _all_ have dirt on each other, and we all want to take down Kane. I don’t necessarily forgive her for what she did, but… I can understand why she did it. It’s up to her to try and make up for it.”

Julie looks back at Mama, takes a deep breath. “Keeping what I’m doing a secret from Kane is a point in your favor,” she acquiesces. “Though I don’t like that you know in the first place. Or _how_ you know.”

“I know a lot of secrets much more dangerous than yours, dear.” Mama’s cube floats toward Julie. “I have no wish to cause a civil war.”

Julie nods, taking that in. “You knew my… my dad, then,” she says. “Before he had me. When my mom was still alive.”

“I did.” Mama’s voice is gentle. “She was in R & D, you know. Such a nice young lady. Smart as a whip, too. She was the one Kane put in charge of building me. Makes us sisters, of a sort.”

“Will you tell me about her sometime?” Julie asks softly. “He never… he never talks about her.”

“Certainly, dear. Whatever you’d like to know.”

Julie nods. “Thank you,” she says. She turns back to Chuck.

“So what’s the plan?” she asks.

***

When Chuck outlines what they want Julie to do, she looks faintly annoyed, and also faintly amused.

“You’re gonna owe me _big_ for this,” she says. “Do you _know_ how hard it is to hack into the bioware manufacturing facilities? Much less smuggle an _entire body_ out of there and get it to Motorcity. I’m going to have to forge _so_ much paperwork.”

“I’ll troubleshoot Nine Lives every day for the rest of the year. I’ll make you a million holograms. I’ll upgrade your cloaking program.”

Julie rolls her eyes. “You do all that stuff _anyway,”_ she says fondly.

“Yeah, but I won’t _complain_ about it.”

Julie grins. _“Wow._ Okay, deal.”

Chuck grins back at her. “Thanks, Julie,” he says gratefully. “So I guess the only question now is a design question.” He turns to Mama’s icon. “What do you want the body to look like?”

Mama is silent for a long moment.

“Let me call Junior,” she says. After about a minute, Junior comes back into the room, an echoing “ _Ka-chaw!”_ from outside cut off by the slam of the door.

“Junior, sweetie, I need to talk to everyone. I’m going to call the rest of the boys,” Mama says. Junior nods. Four screens pop up around Mama’s icon as she dials. One by one, the Mama’s Boys appear in the screens.

“Hello, boys,” Mama says warmly. “I have some good news."

“You got the helium?” Ginger blurts excitedly.

“I think it’s even better than that,” Mama says.

“Check it out!” Junior interjects. “The Burners are gonna fix Mama up with a body in exchange for her helpin’ ‘em with Kane! She won’t even _need_ that dumb helium anymore!”

“For real?” Skillit asks.

“Yes,” Mama says. “We’ve come to an understanding.”

“This rules!” Chad says. “You can get an actual body? Like Chuck?”

“That’s the idea, yes. But I need your advice, boys. I want to look like a ‘mom,’ but what does a mom look like? When I query the web there’s no consensus.”

The boys all look at each other through the screens.

“That’s cuz everybody’s mom looks different,” Junior says. “I dunno what…”

“I got a picture,” Skillit interrupts.

“Whaddaya mean?” Junior demands, peeved.

Skillit crosses his arms. “A picture of my _mom,_ dumbass. She can use that.”

“Hey, I got a picture of my mom, too,” BC says. “Why can’t she use that one?”

“Boys,” Mama interrupts, “do you all have pictures?”

Ginger shakes his head. “Never had a mom,” he says, shrugging.

Chad also shakes his head. “Man, all my shit got wrecked, I got nothin’.”

Junior looks around at them. Then he looks back at Mama’s icon.

“Yeah, I got one,” he says grudgingly. “But it’d be weird if you looked just like her. You’re a different person. Do someone else’s.”

“I have an idea,” Mama says. “I’ll create a composite. Will you all upload your photos? Junior, if you don’t want me to use yours, that’s fine.”

Junior looks mollified. “Well, you could look a _little_ like her,” he says. “She was real pretty.” He taps on his screen. There’s pings as the photos upload.

“Let me model and optimize the composite,” Mama says. Then immediately, she says, “What do you think of this?”

Her icon projects a life-sized hologram of a lovely, plump, middle-aged woman, caramel skin, shoulder-length curly brown hair, round cheeks, crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes.

Junior makes a weird noise. Then he coughs into his hand to cover it up.

“Yeah,” he says when he’s done coughing, “looks like a mom.”

“Rad,” Skillit says.

Chad raises his hand. “Can you give her glasses? I don’t have a picture but I remember my mom had glasses.”

Glasses appear on the woman’s face. Chad nods, satisfied. “Cool,” he says. The hologram rotates a full turn in silence.

“Any objections?” Mama asks. The boys all shake their heads. “Then it’s decided,” she says warmly. “I’ll put together a bioware schema.” Immediately, she says, “Done. Julie, I’ve uploaded it to your system.”

“Got it. Alright, let me head up there. I’ll get started.”

***

Chuck and Dutch watch Julie drive off.

“So we’re really doing this?” Dutch says. “We’re pirating a body for the most powerful supercomputer in Detroit?”

“We’ve done _way_ crazier stuff,” Chuck says.

“We’re going to have to do something about the intranet, though,” Dutch says, worried. “If it can’t function without her, we have a _big_ problem. I should call Tennie. The Cablers know all about stuff that involves. Well. Cables.” He pulls up a screen, dials.

Tennie’s face pops up after two rings.

“Babe!” she says cheerfully. “I was just thinking about you! Hi, Chuck!

“Hey, Tennie,” Chuck says.

“Listen, hon, I gotta talk to you,” Dutch says seriously. “We have a problem, and we’re going to need the Cablers’ expertise. The Motorcity intranet is… compromised.”

Tennie’s eyes widen. “Oh shit,” she says. “Hang on. Hang on. We can’t talk about this with public key security. Is Roth there?”

“Uh. Yeah?” Dutch waves at him. Roth buzzes over.

“Okay, I gave him some private keys just in case. Roth, buddy, can you give Dutch one of those code cubes I had you hold onto?”

Roth reaches into his chassis and pulls out a cube. He hands it to Dutch. Dutch is looking extremely nonplussed.

“Use that to set up a private key encrypted channel and call me back,” Tennie says. “I’ll do the same thing on my end. Roth, which one is that?” Roth holds up three fingers. “Number three. Great. I’ll get mine. Talk to you in a second.”

Dutch gives Chuck a helpless look after Tennie hangs up. Chuck shrugs, at a loss.

It only takes a minute or two for Dutch to set up the encrypted channel. He calls Tennie back.

“You guys found out about the quantum supercomputer?” is the first thing Tennie says.

There’s a silence.

 _“Excuse_ me,” Dutch says.

“The quantum supercomputer that’s integrated into the intranet. You gotta keep that on the DL, guys, it’s really important not to talk about it on normal channels. Regular cybersecurity is like _nothing_ to that computer.”

“Tennie,” Dutch says. Then he stops. “You know what, I can’t even,” he says.

“I have a question,” Chuck says, raising his index finger. “What the _fuck,_ Tennie? You _knew_ about that?”

 _“All_ the Cablers know about that?” She looks puzzled. “We get a lot of ex-R & D techs. One of them knew and clued us in. It’s never been _aggressive._ What’s the big deal, did something happen?”

“Did something _happen,”_ says Dutch.

“You’ve been kinda AWOL lately, babe,” Tennie says, concerned. “Anything I should know about?”

“She HIJACKED me with MALWARE and took my BRAIN out of my BODY and made me FIGHT in the ULTIMATE BOT FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP!” Chuck yells over Dutch’s shoulder.

Tennie furrows her brow.

“You guys better start from the beginning,” she says.

***

Chuck and Dutch take turns interrupting each other until Tennie is fully briefed on the situation.

“In _conclusion,”_ Dutch says, somehow managing to scowl and blush at the same time, “I can’t believe you let me send you those… _selfies…_ without mentioning that the _intranet_ was actually a _sentient quantum supercomputer!”_

“Yeah, because it’s a _secret!”_ Tennie says. “We don’t want her to know we know about her! We’re working on some stuff. But dude, I can’t believe it was _you guys_ who crashed the last bot fight! Dad and I couldn’t go but I heard it got totally wrecked! You didn’t tell me about _that,_ babe!”

“I’ve _been_ kind of _busy,”_ Dutch says, scowling.

Tennie looks at Chuck excitedly. “So did you fight Wrecking Ball?” she asks. “How’d he do? I designed him.”  
  
“TENNIE!” Dutch says, exasperated.

“I didn’t fight him,” Chuck says, “but he totally clobbered Vampirate.”

 _“Nice.”_ Then Tennie’s eyes widen. “Oh shit, did you have to fight _Blendo?_ That thing is _gnarly.”_

“I _destroyed_ Blendo,” Chuck says, gloating _just_ a little.

“GUYS,” Dutch interrupts. “Let’s _focus_ here. What are we going to do about the intranet? Once we switch off the quantum part of Mama’s brain, the _whole thing_ is going to go down.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Tennie says, grinning. “We’ve been laying fiberoptics and wireless nodes for _years_ now, building a new intranet from the ground up so she can’t spy on us anymore. It’s part of why we didn’t want her to know that we knew about her. We’re ready to switch on any day, we were just waiting for the right moment. I can get the process started whenever you guys are ready. Looks like your problem is solved!” She winks at Dutch. “And you’ll be able to send me more selfies without fear!”

“I seriously _cannot_ believe you,” Dutch says.

“Don’t worry about it!” Tennie says blithely. “You’re an artist, just call them nudes. Totally legit artworks.”

“I’m hanging up on you,” Dutch says. “Goodbye forever.”

“Love you, babe,” Tennie says.

“Love you too,” Dutch says, and hangs up. He looks at Chuck.

“She’s a genius, but she’s slightly feral,” he says. “I think that’s part of the appeal?”

Chuck thinks about the last time Mike jumped off a building and grins at Dutch. “Yeah,” he says, “I know the feeling.”

***

It’s going to take Julie most of the rest of the day to get the body fabricated; getting it down to Motorcity will have to wait until tomorrow. And Tennie needs the time to update the Cablers and get the new intranet ready to launch. The remaining Burners decide to head back to HQ and reconvene at Mama’s building in the morning. Junior waves them off after doing a couple of karate chops at Texas.

Mike drives back to base oddly slowly, letting Texas and Dutch pull ahead. When they’re out of sight around a bend he looks at Chuck out of the corner of his eye.

“That was pretty hot,” he says.

Chuck starts. “Wha… ?”

Mike smiles at him brightly.

“All that quantum stuff. And the way you figured out what to do for Mama. You’re just really smart,” he says. “I don’t know what you’re talking about most of the time, but it’s _totally_ a turn-on.”

Chuck hunches his shoulders up to his ears, embarrassed. Mike eyes him again, looking sort of smug, then surprises Chuck by swerving off the highway into a labyrinth of abandoned buildings.

“Where are you going?” Chuck asks. Mike slows Mutt to a stop in a sheltered alley.

“Here,” Mike says, grinning. Chuck looks around. There’s nothing _here_ worth mentioning. He looks at Mike questioningly.

“Hey, Chuckles,” Mike says, leaning over the gearshift and waggling his eyebrows, “I need to... run some tests on Mutt’s suspension. Want to help me out?”

 _Oh._ Chuck smiles, slow and wicked.

“Yes,” he says. “I can totally help with that.”

Mutt’s suspension turns out to be _satisfactorily_ springy.


	13. Self-sufficiency

“For crying out loud,” Dutch’s icon says in a long-suffering tone the next morning while they’re waiting for Julie at the north gate, “we can all see you, you know.”

Mike pulls back from Chuck’s side of the car and settles most of the way back into the driver’s seat. “Just killing some time,” he says into the comms, completely unrepentant. Chuck catches his breath from being thoroughly and unexpectedly kissed.

“Hey, Skinny, if you move into Tiny’s room, can I have yours?” Texas’ icon chimes in. “I could make a whole other gym.”

“No way, Texas, I call dibs,” Dutch says. “I’m turning it into a studio.”

 _“Neither_ of you can _have my room,”_ Chuck protests, swatting at their icons. “I need my room! That’s where I put my stuff!”

“I’ll show you where you can put your st…” Mike starts, under his breath.

“DO NOT,” Chuck interrupts, “finish that sentence, I swear to god, I hate all of you.”

Julie’s icon pops up. Mike snaps to attention. “Jules!” he says. “You doing okay?”

“Well,” Julie says. She sounds a little breathless. There’s a faint squeal of tires in the background. “Yeah, I’m fine. But, uh. Slight wrinkle in the plan?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m headed your way but… there’saboutahundredgruntbotsfollowingme, so, uh— _s_ _hit!_ —” another squeal of tires, “get ready, I guess?”

 _“Jules!”_ Mike says, distressed. “What happened?”

“I used a hologram to disguise myself in the lab while I was piloting the body out,” Julie says. “I was pretending to be this one _pretentious_ asshole who _really_ needs to get kicked off the board, no loss if he’s caught stealing an AI module. I was about to leave, but speak of the devil, he walked in! Oh, _damnit,_ hang on a sec!” She’s silent for a bit, the sound of sporadic laserblasts clear in the near-quiet. Then she says, “God, you should have seen his face when he saw _himself._ I had to make a run for it. Fortunately the body’s got an autopilot mode and isn’t too hard to steer. We made it to the car before the gruntbots got there, but they’re catching up, and they’re _not backing off_.”

“Okay,” Mike says. “Dutch, Texas, we’re going in. You guys take point and start taking out bots, Mutt will hang back and cover Julie ‘til we make it back through the gate. Soon as she’s safe, fall back. The gate will stop the rest of them.”

“Texas is about to kick so much bot!” Texas says. “Like _butt,_ but they’re _bots._ Get it?” He revs his engine. “Wait, _that’s_ not robo-racist, is it?” he asks, concerned.

 _“No,_ Texas, you can kick their bot butts!” Chuck squeaks, clutching the grab handle as Mike also revs Mutt’s engine.

They tear through the gate going ninety and accelerating, Chuck screaming, Texas whooping.

***

There are, in fact, about a hundred gruntbots following Julie, who has surrounded herself with a swarm of hologram Nine Lives, dodging and weaving through sporadic laser fire. Texas charges directly in, Stronghorn’s guns blasting a huge hole through the middle of the bot pack before Dutch can catch up with his sonic blasters.

“Wooooooo! Did you see that, Abigail?” Texas cheers, whipping Stronghorn around and coming at the bots again from behind.

“Thanks, Tex!” Julie says. She sounds a _little_ stressed. Dutch and Texas engage the bots, but there’s still a huge horde following Julie as Mike steers Mutt into the fray, Chuck shrieking and frantically firing all her guns at once.

“Mikey, there’s too many of them!” he wails.

“There’s _always_ too many of them!” Mike says cheerfully, throwing Mutt into a spin and firing the Blastosaurus from his steering wheel.

“Yeah but this time there’s _really_ too many!” Chuck gasps. “I’m calling for backup!”

“Who…”

Chuck hits a button, and Mama’s white cube appears in the car.

“Oh dear,” she says, looking around. “Are you having some trouble?”

 _“Obviously!”_ Chuck yelps. “Can you, like, hack them? Transmit something to shut them down?”

“I _could,”_ Mama says, “but only a quantum computer could do that, and I’m not revealing myself, not when we’re _so close_ to getting me out of this hardware.” Chuck shrieks as Mike swings them around for another blast. Mama says, “I’m sending you a file. Kane was notorious for turning inventions against their creators, so his engineers were always installing backdoors.”

Chuck gets a ping, opens the file. Sure enough, the backdoor’s still there. He slides into the gruntbots’ systems, makes a triumphant “HA!” sound, and uploads a worm, slamming his keys. There’s a loud chorus of falling “beee-ooooop”s from the sky above them as about half the gruntbots start careening out of the air, crashing into each other and slamming into the ground. Mike steers Mutt through the chaos, following Julie, who’s almost to the gate.

“These ones must be running on an updated OS!” Chuck says. “The worm didn’t take them out!” He blasts a few more with Mutt’s guns.

“We got this,” Mike says assuredly, grinning. He pulls Mutt around behind Julie as Nine Lives passes through the gate, her holograms flickering out. Mutt’s tires squeal as Mike drifts her across the gate, giving Chuck a clear shot to fire directly into the throng.

Stronghorn and Whiptail come blasting through from the back of the swarm. “Everyone inside!” Mike yells, and spins Mutt completely around as Dutch and Texas pass her, roaring through the gate. Mike accelerates behind them, Chuck firing their rear guns.

Only a few of the gruntbots make it through the gate with them before they can close it, and they make quick work of mopping them up. 

“Thanks for coming to get me, guys,” Julie says, firing a laser straight through one of the last gruntbots.

“Don’t worry about a thing, Isabel,” Texas says, running Stronghorn over a downed bot. “Texas always has your back!”

“And yet you can’t seem to call me by the right name,” Julie says, amused.

Texas just laughs.

***

They pull up to Mama’s building triumphantly, Dutch jumping out first and giving everyone high-fives as they get out of their cars. Mike leads them into the building, Julie piloting the body at the end of the procession.

The Mama’s Boys are in the server room, using some boxes as chairs and a table. They’re completely focused on a card game that apparently involves slapping your opponent's hand _as hard as you can_. When the Burners come in, they look up, distracted, and Junior takes the opportunity to flip the box they’re using as a table onto its side, spilling the cards onto the floor.

“Boys,” Mama says absently, “clean that up.” Her icon floats over to the Burners. “Are you all okay?”

“Yeah, no sweat,” Mike says, waving a hand. “And look what we got!”

Julie, with a small smile, pilots the body into the room.

“We got your new hot-bod!” Texas says, motioning to it. “It’s like a hot-rod, but a bod! Get it?” Julie walks it forward.

“Yes. My… ‘hot-bod.’ Well.”

 _“Whoa!”_ Skillit says as he hurries over to Mama’s new chassis. “You’re gonna be _short!”  
_

“You’ve always been a whole lot bigger than us, s’gonna be weird,” Ginger says as he peeks over Junior’s shoulder.

 _“I_ think it’s the _bomb diggity!”_ Junior pipes up. “When’re you gonna be all up in your new bod?”

“Soon enough, dear,” Mama says. “I’ve already written software to copy myself over to the AI module.” The boys start conversing excitedly.

“Nice outfit,” Chuck says to Julie. The body is wearing what appears to be a heavily modified Deluxe uniform, turned into a stylish A-line dress. There’s a matching hat on the body’s head, cocked impishly to the side. White boots complete the look. Julie smiles. “Claire helped,” she says.

Mama’s cube floats over to Julie. “Thank you, dear.” Her voice quiets, the cube leans in. “Whenever you want to talk, just send me a message, alright?” 

Julie just nods, taking a seat on a box. Mike sits down next to her, pulling her into a one-armed hug. She sighs, leaning on his shoulder. She looks tired. Texas walks over and pats her on the head. She swats at him half-heartedly. He just grins and sits down, giving her a half-hug from the other side.

Mama’s cube floats over to Chuck and Dutch. “You two should be able to access everything stored in my memory with the cables we have here, including the transfer program. It will copy and delete as it goes, so make sure to keep an eye on the process.”

Chuck raises an eyebrow. Dutch raises two.

“You sure you wanna do that? If there’s a hitch it might mean you don’t get everything transferred right,” Dutch says, worried

“There won’t be any hitches. I coded it myself,” Mama rebukes them. “And I don’t want any part of me left in the old hardware, not with it set to fail in the next few days. I don’t want... _me_... to suffer. ”

Chuck nods, “Alright, that makes sense. We’ll start setting up. Where are the cables?” Mama’s cube motions towards the box the boys were using as a table. Chuck opens it up, starts pulling out equipment.

The boys pull a few of the other boxes together into a makeshift platform and get the new body situated face down. BC produces a cane from somewhere, props it next to the body.

“I found that,” he says. “I thought it might be handy in case walkin’ and stuff is hard at first.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, dear, thank you,” Mama says, sounding pleased.

Dutch leans over the body’s head, starts working on getting the AI module out and connecting it to the cables for the transfer.

“So... you’re going to copy everything that's stored in Mama’s non-fancy part?” Mike says from his place on the box next to Julie.

“Yup!” Chuck says as he hands Dutch a cable. “The program will delete the bits it copies as it goes.”

“Oh. Isn’t that, like, I dunno... kinda murdery?” Mike says, concerned.

“Uh.” Chuck pauses for a moment. “Well, technically this hardware can’t maintain Mama’s consciousness anyway, so it’s more like we’re... moving Mama into a new body, and letting this one die.” He shrugs.

“Still sounds a bit murdery,” Mike says.

“Consciousness is tricky, dear,” Mama’s icon says. “If you woke up with a new arm, would you be a different person? Maybe, probably not. What about if half your brain was replaced? Your whole brain?”

“Pretty sure I’d be a different person If I had an entirely different brain,” Mike snarks.

“What if you replaced the neurons one by one with exact copies? At what point are you a different person?” Mama prods. “Your body makes new cells to replace the old ones. It won’t be that different for me, it’ll just happens in hours instead of years.”

“The AI in the module will _be_ her in every meaning of the word,” Chuck says. “I could do the same to myself if I had an extra module, change where my mind is stored. Any AI could. It’s just... not usually necessary.”

“This is some _metaphysical_ shit, baby,” Junior says from just behind Chuck. Chuck jumps and turns to stare at Junior.

“Like, what even is a soul, you dig?” Junior continues. “Who even knows? Maybe it’s just an emergent property of the mind, if it even exists, right?”

“Right?” Chuck says, taken aback.

“Groovy,” Junior says. Then he yells, “Hey, quit touchin’ that!” at Ginger, and runs across the room to tackle him, getting him in a headlock. Chuck stares after him, watching the boys rough-house. Then he looks at Mike. Mike shrugs.

Chuck hands Dutch the last cable and crosses the room to start connecting the other ends to ports in the banks of machinery that serve as Mama’s current body. He’ll leave the philosophizing to someone else.

***

Once they finally have everything set up for the transfer, Mama says, “Alright, to review. I’ve checked the decision-making software, and it matches well with the quantum computer outputs. It’s currently loaded in the AI module.” The cube nods towards the tangle of cables Dutch is seated next to, near the prone body. “We’ll upload me to the module, install it in the body, and then my boys will rig this place to explode if Kane ever comes around.”

Dutch speaks up. “Um, wait, about that last part—"

“Wonderful, everything is in order.” Mama’s cube turns to look at her boys. “It’ll take a little while, darlings. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Chuck says. “There might be a moment when you wake up in the AI module without the sensorium connected. Just wait it out. It would serve you right, anyway. That was totally _freaky_ when it happened to me.”

“I _said_ I was sorry,” Mama says petulantly.

 _“Fuck_ you,” Chuck says cheerfully. “Let’s do this.” Mama’s cube blinks out. Chuck hits the key sequence to start the transfer program. There’s a beep, and a progress bar pops up in Chuck’s screen, at one percent. There’s a long, drawn-out silence. Someone coughs. The bar ticks up to two percent.

“Welp, that’s anti-climactic,” Chuck says. “It’s going to take a few hours.”

Texas jumps to his feet, holds out a hand to Julie.

“Come on, Marian, let’s head back to HQ. You look like you could use a break. Texas can show you his sweet new muay thai moves.” Julie looks apprehensive, but also reluctantly intrigued. She takes Texas’ hand, lets him pull her up.

“Unless you need me, I’ll head back too,” Dutch says. “There’s a couple things I want to work on back home.”

Chuck waves them off. “Yeah, we’re good. This should be pretty straightforward, I can do the install when it’s finished.”

Chuck watches them drive off, Texas revving his engine a little on the way. Then he goes back inside and settles in to wait.

Chuck watches the progress bar creep up. The boys somehow rope Mike into another round of their slap-heavy card game. They seem to keep changing the rules, but Mike just laughs and plays dumb, getting some good hits in. Chuck works on some other projects, keeping one eye on the progress bar.

Fifty percent. The boys are getting bored. Mike offers to take them outside and show them how to do some moves with the bo, which they enthusiastically agree to. Chuck is left in blessed silence for a while, and double-checks all the connections. Everything looks good.

Eighty percent. The boys come back in, frazzled and exhausted, and collapse into a nap pile against some of the boxes. Mike, looking pleased with himself, sits next to Chuck and starts playing a fighting game on his screen.

Ninety-eight percent. Chuck nudges Junior with his foot. Junior blinks, shaking himself into alertness.

“We’re almost ready,” Chuck says. Junior wakes up the other boys.

Ninety-nine percent. Chuck hovers over the AI module, ready to do the install. He doesn’t want to leave Mama in that featureless void for too long, despite everything.

The progress bar ticks over to one hundred percent. It makes a triumphant beep. The boys cheer. Chuck disconnects the transfer cables from the module, carries it carefully over to the body, installs it, and seals the back of the head shut.

Mama shifts. She twitches a little, raises her head, puts it back down. She says something into the boxes, muffled. 

“Can you turn over?” Chuck says, hovering his hands over her. Mike is standing next to him, concerned.

Mama raises her head again.

“I _knew_ this would be weird,” she says. Chuck smiles. Mike looks relieved.

Mama stiltedly, awkwardly raises herself, flops over onto her back, and sits up. The boys cheer again, BC and Skillit pumping their fists in the air in triumph, Chad clapping. Mama looks at them.

“My _boys,”_ she says. Her face is expressionless, but her voice is choked with emotion. She haltingly opens her arms, stretches them out. “Come here.”

Junior steps forward first. He also stretches out his arms. They sort of slot themselves together, really awkwardly, and Chuck almost laughs. Then Mama wraps her arms around Junior’s back and pulls him close, and he buries his face in her shoulder, and she pets his hair, and Chuck, despite himself, gets a little emotional.

“Am I doing this right?” Mama asks after a bit.

“Yeah,” Junior says into her shoulder.

“Man, step off,” Ginger says. “Leave some hugs for the rest of us.”

“In a second, dumbass,” Junior says, muffled. He makes a sniffling sound, then pulls back sheepishly. He grabs a handkerchief out of the pocket of his overalls and blows his nose into it with a loud honk.

“Cool,” he says thickly. “This is rad.”

One by one, Mama hugs her boys. She’s careful about it; her arms move a little erratically, there seems to be a slight delay as she gets used to using her movement directories. But they manage. When the boys have all been thoroughly hugged, she turns to Chuck.

“Thank you,” she says.

Chuck is slightly choked up. “Yeah, no problem,” he says.

“Let me try an expression,” Mama says. “To show you how I feel.”

She smiles. It’s terrifying.

 _“Okay,”_ Chuck says, high-pitched, “that needs a little work!” She stops smiling.

“I’ll practice,” she says, expressionless again. “For the moment, I’d like to work on using my legs. There’s something else I want to try.” She reaches out and grabs the cane.

“Wait, hold on, you know you’re not designed to operate a body, it might take some getting used to. You should…”

Mama heaves her legs over the side of the boxes and stands up. She wobbles for a second. Then she takes a few halting steps, supporting herself with the cane. She lifts one leg, swings it back and forth a little, testing her balance.

“Right,” she says resolutely. “I’m gonna kick the Duke in the _nads.”_ Junior whoops, raising his fists in the air.

 _“Okay!”_ Chuck says. “Great! I think we’re done here!”

Mike and Chuck leave the boys outside the building that once housed Mama, helping her practice taking gradually more confident steps with her cane in the parking lot. She waves at them as they drive off; a jerky, unpracticed motion that unbalances her slightly. BC steps to her side, supporting her before she can tip over. Chuck watches them in the rear-view mirror for a moment, then turns to Mike.

“We did good today, I think,” he says. Mike smiles at him.

“Yeah,” Mike says. “We did good.”


	14. Self-determination

When they pull up at HQ, Dutch is there to greet them. He grins at Chuck.

“Hey man, I have a surprise for you,” he says, gesturing at Chuck through Mutt’s window.

“You know I hate surprises,” Chuck says wryly. Dutch laughs. Chuck pecks Mike on the cheek and climbs down out of Mutt. Mike climbs down as well and waves at them, heading off toward Mutt Dogs. Chuck follows Dutch to the back of the garage.

He stops, stunned, when he sees what Dutch has been up to.

Dutch has turned Chuck’s erstwhile gladiator body into a work of art. It’s painted in bright neon colors, sitting cross-legged against the wall next to Chuck’s workstation. One hand is in a mudra, the other hand is out, palm up, holding a toolbox full of tools. It’s wearing sunglasses.

Chuck just stands there for a long moment.

“Is that okay?” Dutch says, suddenly worried. “I didn’t want to just _scrap_ him, I mean, he was _you_ for a hot second, I figured he could be a cool accent piece around the place, I got you a new soldering iron and stuff, he’s holding it, look—”

Chuck starts laughing. He laughs and laughs and grabs Dutch up in a hug, lifting him off his feet and spinning him around. When he puts him down, Dutch looks a little stunned and a lot pleased.

“I love it,” Chuck says. “I love _you.”_ He pauses, still grinning. “In a friend way,” he clarifies.

Dutch punches him in the shoulder. “I know, man, I love you in a friend way too.”

“It’s _great,”_ Chuck says. “I will forever treasure this memento of the worst day of my life.”

“The worst day _so far,”_ Dutch says, laughing. “You’re still hanging out with _us,_ after all.”

“I’d rather have a terrible day with you guys than a great day anywhere else,” Chuck says, and he means it. He holds out a fist. “Here’s to more terrible days.”

Dutch fistbumps him. Then he gets a thoughtful look. Chuck recognizes that look. Dutch is having an idea.

They spend the next hour working on a really complicated secret handshake.

***

They’re all in the kitchen when Mama calls them from the passenger seat of Junior’s car.

“Have you been following the Duke’s latest announcements?” she says without preamble. “He’s called all the gangs together.”

“Ugh,” Mike says. “I better unblock his number so I can keep tabs on him.” He hits a few keys. There’s several pings from his inbox. Mike opens up the most recent message

“Hel _lo_ to my most _loyal_ of fans!” The Duke’s face fills the entire screen as he preens, flicking his hair and adjusting his sunglasses. “I have an announcement that I know you’re all _dying_ to hear.” The camera follows him as he saunters up the red velvet dias toward his throne. He throws a leg over one armrest, sprawls across it faux-casually.

“I’ve decided to hold a _boppin’_ bonanza to celebrate the sudden and rather _explosive_ end to my Ultimate Bot Fighting Championship! Though, _tragically_ , we will never know _which_ bot holds the title of the _Ultimate Bot Fighting Champion_...”

The Duke’s sunglasses slip down his nose as he stares down the camera. He does _not_ look happy. Abruptly he spins around, legs swinging over the opposite armrest as he twirls his cane.

“You all know who to blame!” He smiles with bared teeth. “An-y-ways! I was _moved_ by the drama that unfolded on the oil-stained battlefield, and I’ve decided to announce a winner _despite_ you-know-who RUINING _EVERYTHING!!_ ”

Number Two appears from behind the throne, hands him a handkerchief with his face embroidered on it. The Duke wipes his brow with an exaggeratedly pained look.

“Never let it be said that _I_ , the _Duke_ of _Detroit_ , the most _just_ and _gorgeous_ of rulers, let a little thing like _needless SABOTAGE_ get me down!” He stands, shoulders thrown back. The camera zooms in for a close up.

“Everyone’s invited and attendance is mandatory,” he states flatly. “ _YOW!_ ” The message closes.

“Yeesh,” Dutch says through a mouthful of muffin.

“We’re heading over there now,” Mama says.

“What are you gonna do?” Chuck asks suspiciously. “You can’t take on all his goons in a fair fight.”

A slow, deliberate smile spreads across Mama’s face. She’s already gotten much better at smiling, but it’s still pretty weird. “Who says it’s going to be _fair?_ You think I didn’t store every scrap of data I picked up when I was the intranet? I have the keycode to every biolock on every gun his goons have. I can shut them all down. And I can still get into all his mansion’s systems. Just because I can’t break encryption anymore doesn’t mean I can’t _hack.”_

“You’re _terrifying,”_ Chuck says, impressed.

“Who knows, though,” Mama says. “He might surprise us. It might not come down to a fight. Maybe he’s going to do something reasonable for once.”

“I’m not holding my breath,” Chuck says.

“Well, _I’m_ curious,” Mike says. “We’ll head over there, too. Might as well hear what he has to say.”

***

They arrive on the esplanade in front of the Duke’s mansion in the midst of a gathering crowd. The Duke’s goons are out in full force, but the Duke himself hasn’t appeared yet. The Burners pull up next to the Mama’s Boys. Chuck gets out of Mutt just in time to see Mama lick her thumb and rub a smudge of dirt off Junior’s face. She seems to be taking to her new situation quite well.

Chuck looks around and notices something odd.

“Check out the decorations,” he says sourly to Mama.

The Duke of Detroit’s mansion is even more guady than usual. Balloons are tied to every surface, giving the whole place a festive atmosphere.

They’re _helium_ balloons.

“Oh, that _asshole_ ,” Mama grits out through clenched teeth.

There’s a sudden explosion of pyrotechnics along the edges of the Duke’s palatial staircase. When they’ve died down, Number Two approaches a mic at the top of the stairs.

“Presenting…” she drawls. She snaps her gum. “The Duke of Detroit!”

The enormous doors of the Duke’s mansion slam open and the Duke sweeps out, cape billowing behind him.

“Thank you, thank you, _thank_ you, Motorcitizens!” he bellows, taking the mic from Number Two. “It’s so lovely to see all of your _beautiful_ shining faces! Thank you for coming to my shindig-slash-announcement of the Ultimate Bot Fighting Champion on this _fine_ Motorcity afternoon!”

The crowd murmurs restlessly.

“As you all know,” the Duke says severely, “we had some _party crashers.”_ He glares at the Burners. “So the championship couldn’t be officially completed! The whole thing ended in chaos! Which would normally be _gr-r-r-reat_ show biz, but people had _money_ riding on this. I got some _complaints,_ I’ll tell _you._ Certainly can’t have _that!_ The _last_ thing I want to do is leave you in _suspense!_ S-o-o-o-o-o… who is it? Who will be awarded the _grand_ prize of an incredibly large amount of precious, _precious_ helium? The winner i-i-i-i-i-s…” There’s a long, theatrical pause. A drumroll plays over the speakers.

“NO ONE!” the Duke thunders. “You’re all TERRIBLE! That sorry excuse for a _show_ tanked my ratings! I’m in the toilet! So I’m _keeping_ the helium.” The Duke snatches a balloon off the door behind him, bites it, and inhales deeply, throwing his head back.

“And you can all s-u-u-u-u-u-u-ck i-i-i-i-i-t!” he warbles in an obnoxiously high-pitched voice.

There’s an angry mutter from the crowd. Mama steps forward.

 _“Excuse_ me, young man,” she says loudly.

The Duke looks her up and down. He raises an eyebrow.

“Who’s the MILF with the cane?” he stage-whispers to Number Two, voice still artificially high.

Mama narrows her eyes. Junior cracks his knuckles.

 _“Okay!”_ Mike says briskly, ushering the Burners back to their cars. “Time to go!”

They peel out as all hell breaks loose behind them. Chuck watches the Duke’s mansion go dark in Mutt’s rear-view mirror. Something explodes inside it. Probably the karaoke machine. Chuck smiles.

It’s a good day to be self-determining.


	15. Epilogue: Self-confidence

“You sure about this?” Mike says, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “If you don’t like it, you won’t be able to grow it back.”

Chuck smiles at him from the passenger seat.

“Sure I’m sure,” he says. “It’ll look just like that 3D render Julie made me.”   


Mike smiles back. “Yeah, it’s gonna be super cute. I just wanted to make sure.”

“Mikey, don’t worry so much. If worse comes to worst, I can always get my head replaced.”

Mike frowns. “Really?”

“No. You dope.”

Mike laughs, leans over the gearshift, and kisses him.

“Okay,” he says. “Call me when you’re done. I’ll see you in a bit.”

“See you soon,” Chuck says. Then he takes a deep breath, climbs down out of Mutt, and, holding the chip with Julie’s 3D render, walks through the door of the Motorcity Chop Shop and Style Emporium.

It’s time to get a real haircut.


End file.
